Black universal credit claimants 58% more likely to get sanctions than white people, while mixed ethnic groups are 72% more likely

The sanctions have been notorious for putting some claimants into debt and forcing them to use food banks. Photograph: FilippoBacci/Getty Images

Black and minority ethnic benefit claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions – financial penalties typically running into hundreds of pounds – according to official statistics unveiled for the first time.

Black universal credit claimants were 58% more likely to be sanctioned than white claimants, mixed ethnic groups were 72% more likely and Asians 5% more likely, according to the figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Sanctions have long been controversial, used by ministers to signal crackdowns on alleged job shirkers, and notorious for subjecting sanctioned claimants to extreme hardship, including food bank use, poor mental and physical health and financial debt.

Timi Okuwa, the chief executive of the civil rights charity Black Equity Organisation, said: “These figures confirm what many have long suspected – that the welfare system disproportionately penalises black and ethnic minority communities.”

Campaigners stopped short of claiming that the disparities showed evidence of structural racism, or racial discrimination in jobcentres, but called on ministers to explain and justify the figures and guarantee that minority ethic claimants would be treated fairly by the benefits system.

Caroline Selman, a researcher for the Public Law Project charity, which analysed the statistics, said. “The public needs to know whether [sanctions] decisions are being made fairly and the DWP needs to assess any potential for discrimination in its sanctions process so that it can be rooted out.”

Sanctions are imposed by officials when claimants are deemed to have failed to comply with benefit rules, such as missing a jobcentre interview or refusing an offer of a job. Penalties vary, with benefit payments being stopped for as little as a few days or as long as six months.

An equality impact assessment of universal credit in 2011 flagged up the risk that minority ethnic claimants would be disproportionately affected by sanctions. Until now, however, the DWP has not considered the level of universal credit ethnicity data available robust enough for publication.

The data covers the year to the end of April, when for the first time the number of universal credit claimants self-reporting their ethnicity on their claim form rose above 70% – the minimum baseline needed to underpin any analysis.

The DWP cautioned against drawing firm conclusions, saying it planned to publish its own analysis along with detailed ethnic breakdowns this year. A spokesperson said: “We are analysing the latest data on benefit sanctions to determine the causes of differences in imposed sanctions across different demographics.”

However, David Webster of Glasgow University, a leading expert on benefit sanctions, said although there were limitations to the statistics, they revealed “stark” ethnic disparities that had also been found in studies of universal credit’s predecessor for paying unemployment benefit, jobseeker’s allowance.

“The ethnic disparities shown by the statistics do not necessarily indicate racial discrimination or structural racism but their scale is cause for concern. The DWP cannot expect a free pass on this – it needs to explain and justify those disparities,” he told the Guardian.

There are about 7 million universal credit claimants in the UK. In 2023-24 just under 440,000 universal credit claimants were sanctioned. Annual rates of benefit sanctions hit a high of 1m in 2013 but dropped after a public outcry over widespread reports of abusive and cruel sanctions practices by jobcentre officials.

Successive governments have insisted that stopping welfare benefits would “incentivise” supposedly reluctant claimants to look for work, get a job or work more hours, but academic studies – and even the government’s own research – have shown they have little or no positive effect on employment rates.

An internal DWP study in 2020 found sanctions slowed claimants’ progress into work and pushed them into lower-paying jobs. Publication of the report was blocked as “not in the public interest” by the former welfare secretary Thérèse Coffey, and finally released in 2023 after a long freedom of information fight.

Labour suggested in its 2024 general election manifesto that it would retain benefit sanctions, promising there would be “consequences” for unemployed claimants who did not fulfil obligations to work if they were able to.