Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will commission research on the effects of removing benefits from people and undertake to report the outcome of such work to the House.

The Department does not remove benefits. A claimant may incur a sanction or become disentitled to their benefit if they do not meet their conditionality requirements.

As with all our policies, we will continue to keep the operation of the sanctions system under review to ensure that it continues to operate effectively and as fairly as possible. We also continue to make improvements as committed to in the Oakley Review, which goes further than the scope of the Review, to include all jobseekers allowance and all employment and support allowance.

We will continue to publish sanctions statistics on a quarterly basis.