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<p>Hardship payments provide financial protection for claimants whose benefit is reduced
by a Fraud Loss of Benefit penalty or a Benefit Sanction.</p><p> </p><p>For a) and
b), the information requested is not readily available at a country or constituency
level and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.</p><p> </p><p>For c) the
requested data is provided for Great Britain in the following two tables for Jobseekers
Allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) respectively. Please note,
figures supplied are derived from data which has not been quality assured to Official
Statistics publication standard. These results can change retrospectively as further
information is received. They should therefore be treated with caution. Figures have
been rounded to the nearest 1,000.</p><p> </p><table><tbody><tr><td colspan="5"><p>JSA
- Number of hardship payments awarded as a result of a sanction</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2015</p></td><td><p>2016</p></td><td><p>2017</p></td><td><p>2018</p></td><td><p>2019
(year to Aug 19)</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>120,000</p></td><td><p>58,000</p></td><td><p>29,000</p></td><td><p>10,000</p></td><td><p>Fewer
than 1,000</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><table><tbody><tr><td colspan="5"><p>ESA
- Number of hardship payments awarded as a result of a sanction</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2015</p></td><td><p>2016</p></td><td><p>2017</p></td><td><p>2018</p></td><td><p>2019
(year to Aug 19)</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>4,000</p></td><td><p>2,000</p></td><td><p>1,000</p></td><td><p>Fewer
than 1,000</p></td><td><p>Fewer than 1,000</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><p>For
Universal Credit, the data cannot be disaggregated to identify the hardship payments
that have been directly attributed to the application of a benefit sanction from those
resulting from a fraud penalty.</p>
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