Disabled benefits claimants face £71 a week fines

There was a very frightening post and link in Facebook about a leaked document suggesting that the government is thinking about docking £71 a week (that is 70% of ESA WRAG benefits) for people in that group who fail to do enough to prepare for work including going on the Work Programme 'without good reason'. Now it was outrageous enough and beggared belief that they were thinking of sanctioning sick and disabled people up to £28 (ie the disability component of their ESA) but to take away most of their income is despicable in the extreme. Surely people declared as unfit for work have always got 'good reason' by virtue of being on ESA and awarded 15 points or more which means they are ‘unfit for work’. So what would constitute not being a good reason, I have no idea. Is being long-term sick and disabled not a good enough reason?
There must be something illegal about this ie the Work Programme is to all intents and purposes 'work',

Asbo wrote:

There was a very frightening post and link in Facebook about a leaked document suggesting that the government is thinking about docking £71 a week (that is 70% of ESA WRAG benefits) for people in that group who fail to do enough to prepare for work including going on the Work Programme 'without good reason'. Now it was outrageous enough and beggared belief that they were thinking of sanctioning sick and disabled people up to £28 (ie the disability component of their ESA) but to take away most of their income is despicable in the extreme. Surely people declared as unfit for work have always got 'good reason' by virtue of being on ESA and awarded 15 points or more which means they are ‘unfit for work’. So what would constitute not being a good reason, I have no idea. Is being long-term sick and disabled not a good enough reason?
There must be something illegal about this ie the Work Programme is to all intents and purposes 'work',

Hi A,

See this article in The Benefits News Section, from yesterday :

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/benefits-news/story/743

As this is still a proposal, and not yet law, we can not really comment any further.

I am locking this thread to stop it developing into a discussion, as unfortunately, this is not a discussions forum.

bro58