PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Social Security Benefits: Disqualification (12 April 2021)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to her Department's Official Statistics entitled Benefit sanctions statistics to October 2020 (experimental), published on 23 February 2021, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of the reduction in the use of benefit sanctions since March 2020 on trends in the number of social security benefit claimants seeking help from food banks in that time period.

Asked by:
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour)

We have not made any assessment of the effect of the reduction in use of benefit sanctions since March 2020 and have no plans to do so.

We cannot isolate the effect of the reduction in the use of benefit sanctions as this has coincided with other changes to conditionality that took place over the same period, for example the three-month suspension of work search and availability requirements and the suspension of face-to-face claimant appointments. Together with the highly atypical economic circumstances we have experienced over this period, this would make any such assessment unreliable.

Work Coaches will continue to work with claimants to ensure claimant commitments are reasonable for claimants’ circumstances.

Answered by:
Mims Davies (Conservative)
20 April 2021