Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many welfare claimants were sanctioned between 21 and 27 December 2015; and how many such claimants were single parents.

The information requested is not yet available.

The Department publishes Official Statistics on Jobseekers Allowance (JSA), (including JSA Lone Parents) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) sanction decisions and these statistics are published via the following link:

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

The latest set of Official Statistics was released on 11 November 2015 and covers all decisions made to 30 June 2015.

Guidance on how to extract the information required from Stat-Xplore can be found at:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started---SuperWEB2.html

The latest set of Official Statistics on Income Support Lone Parent sanctions was released on 11 November 2015 and covers all decisions made to 30 June 2015. A summary of this data can be found here

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/income-support-lone-parent-regime-figures-on-sanctions-and-work-focused-interviews--2