Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 25 February 2019 to Question 223830, if he will make an estimate of the cost of finding out what proportion of universal credit claimants have not been in receipt of any benefits in the 180 days following a sanction decision.

Finding out what proportion of Universal Credit claimants have not been in receipt of any benefits in the 180 days following a sanction decision would require DWP to link together several complex datasets and quality assure the results. It is estimated that due to the time it would take to do this (several months), the cost of compiling the requested information is likely to exceed £850.