House of Commons briefing on why universal credit sanction rates are higher

New analysis from the Commons Library examines why there are higher sanction rates under universal credit than under JSA (8.2 per cent to 0.3 per cent respectively in December 2017) -

‘... higher rate of sanctioning, the DWP argues and our new analysis corroborates, is due to the way DWP deals with claimants who miss a work-search interview without good reason under universal credit compared to under JSA (one of UC’s predecessors). Despite this analysis, however, there are still a number of questions relating to sanctions under universal credit that we cannot yet answer…

... If we ignore sanctions under JSA and UC due to failing to comply with an interview, sanction rates under the two benefits look much more similar.

It’s worth noting, however, that this requires us to ignore the vast majority of UC sanctions. We cannot say whether these trends are true of the UC full services also, for which sanction decisions data is not available. Neither do we know what the impact of this higher rate of sanctioning is on claimants or their ability to find employment.’