Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what work her Department has undertaken to evaluate the use of benefit sanctions.

The Department considers all available evidence when making decisions regarding new or existing policies. Conditionality is a long established tool for supporting our claimants into work and we have strong, high-quality UK-specific evidence, gathered through the use of Randomised Control Trials, that conditionality is effective at supporting people into work. It is likely some of the effect might be attributable to the sanctions associated with conditionality, but we cannot be certain on this. We will continue to consider the impact our policies have on our claimants.