Rachel Reeves MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, responding to the Work and Pensions select committee report on benefit sanctions, said:

“This report has shone a spotlight on the government’s failure to deliver a fair, proportionate and effective social security system. It shows how Iain Duncan Smith’s chaotic mismanagement of benefit sanctions has forced families to rely on food banks to feed their children. The government should accept the recommendations of the report to improve this failing system.

“Labour has a better plan to ensure people fulfil their responsibility to look for and accept work with a fair, proportionate and effective system of sanctions. A Labour government will end Job Centre sanction targets and ensure that vulnerable people get the hardship payments they are entitled to. And we will ensure that everyone who can work, does work through a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee.”

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