Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people claiming (a) jobseeker's allowance, (b) employment and support allowance and (c) universal credit had their benefit sanctioned in the most recent period for which figures are available.
The information requested, up to 31 March 2016, on the number of sanction referrals and adverse sanction decisions, in respect of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), is published and available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started---SuperWEB2.html
The information requested on Universal Credit sanctions is not currently available. The Department updated its strategy for releasing official statistics on Universal Credit (UC) in February 2016. As outlined in the strategy, officials are currently assessing the data for UC and will only release information once the necessary quality assurance work has taken place. These statistics will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for official statistics.
Universal Credit official statistics and the Departments release strategy can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics