Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many sanctions were imposed on benefit claimants in Leeds by her Department in each of the last five years.

The available information on the number of benefit sanction decisions by local authority is regularly published and can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

We engage at a personal and individual level with all of our claimants and are committed to tailoring the support that we give, and any conditionality requirements to the specific circumstances of the individuals.

We take a number of steps to make sure our decisions are fair. When considering whether a sanction is appropriate, a Decision Maker will take all the claimant’s individual circumstances, including any health conditions or disabilities and any evidence of good cause, into account before deciding whether a sanction is warranted.