Written question asked by David Linden (Scottish National Party) on Tuesday, 22 February 2022, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 24 February 2022. It was answered by Mims Davies (Conservative) on Tuesday, 1 March 2022 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Social Security Benefits: Disqualification

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to her Department's publication entitled Benefit sanctions statistics to October 2021, if she will publish details of the investigative work on sanction durations conducted by her Department since the publication of that data was suspended.

Answer: The investigation of sanction durations is ongoing and involves the extensive examination and rewriting of complex code to ensure that the methodology is robust. We will provide updates on progress within the bulletin and inform users of the outcome of our investigations once these are complete. We aim to revise the complete series for sanction duration and median sanction length statistics using the improved methodology in line with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics as soon as possible.

Secondary information