Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress her Department has made on plans to roll out yellow card warnings in place of immediate benefit sanctions.

The Department committed to look at processes to give claimants a written warning, instead of a sanction, for a first sanctionable failure to attend a Work-Search Review. Before making an assessment of the merits of extending such a system we are under-taking a series of small-scale Proof of Concepts of this warning system.

The increase in claimants due to Covid has led to a pause in this testing in order to prioritise support for claimants during this difficult time.