The Work and Pensions Committee published the government’s response (pdf) to its report on benefit sanctions, in February 2019.
The government:
- accepts the recommendation to evaluate the effectiveness of reforms to welfare conditionality and sanctions
- does not accept the recommendation to reduce sanction lengths
- agrees to complete research on the impact of conditionality on lone parents as part of the wider evaluation on the effectiveness of conditionality and sanctions but cannot, before then, accept the recommendation to lower the sanction rate for lead carers
- does not accept the recommendation to introduce markers in Universal Credit as the use of pinned notes is the alternative, better method of recording complex needs.