Stephen Timms – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department takes into account successful challenges to benefit sanctions retrospectively in benefit off-flow statistics.

Priti Patel

It is not necessary to retrospectively adjust the benefit off-flow statistics. The sanctions figures cover both disallowances and sanctions and neither automatically lead to an off-flow from JSA.

We ask claimants who are disallowed and who wish to continue claiming to reaffirm their circumstances and those that do so remain in the claimant count. Only those not prepared to commit to actively seek and be available for work would leave the count as an off-flow.

Claimants who are sanctioned retain their underlying entitlement to benefit and only flow off if they choose not to attend their job search reviews.