Benefits: Sanctions

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the relative figures are that since 2010 the volume of sanctions has run at between 3% and 5.5% whereas between 2005 and 2010 the rate was running between 2% and 4%. One of the most encouraging elements of the new regime is that the proportion of people on high-level sanctions has fallen quite steeply and is now down by 40% from 10,000 per calendar month to 6,000 per calendar month.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister tell the House whether the officials working in the DWP are working to targets, and whether this has any impact on the number of sanctions that are applied?

[Lord Freud]

We are not working to targets. We have made it absolutely plain that that is not our policy. We have had a study done on that by the head of JCP, Neil Couling, which reported in May and found that we did not run targets. Obviously, we collect management information, without which we could not give out the kind of data that is requested.