Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times participants in the work programme were sanctioned between (a) June 2011 and November 2015 and (b) August 2015 and November 2015.

The information requested is not available.

The Department publishes Official Statistics on Jobseekers Allowance (JSA), sanctions, including those who have been sanctioned for failure to participate in the Work Programme and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) sanction decisions, for those who have been sanctioned for failure to participate in a work related activity, which will include the Work Programme, and these statistics are published via the following link:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

The latest set of Official Statistics was released on 11 November 2015 and covers all decisions made to 30 June 2015.

Guidance on how to extract the information required from Stat-Xplore can be found at:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started---SuperWEB2.html