Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many (1) people, and (2) dependants are currently subject to Universal Credit sanctions; and what plans they have for reducing that number.

The number of people on Universal Credit with a sanction deduction in February 2018 was 31,720 against a total number of 774,600 people on Universal Credit at that time.

Under Universal Credit dependants in a household cannot be sanctioned.

As a sanction is only applied when a claimant fails to meet their conditionality requirements without good reason, the Department does not have expectations on the numbers of sanctions that will be applied.

However, we take a number of steps to ensure claimants are supported to meet their conditionality requirements. Work coaches tailor claimants’ conditionality requirements, and the support they require to meet them, to their individual circumstances and capabilities. They work with claimants to agree their conditionality requirements, explaining what could happen should they fail to meet them. Claimants are given every opportunity to explain why they failed to meet their agreed conditionality requirements before a sanction decision is made. When considering whether a sanction is appropriate, a Decision Maker will take all the claimant’s individual circumstances and any evidence of good reason provided, into account before deciding whether a sanction is warranted.

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