The following details have been supplied by the TUC:
Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith should apologise for his 'outrageous spin' after it was revealed some jobcentre staff had been being forced to stop people's benefits to meet targets, civil service union PCS has said. The union's general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said: 'When this story broke Mr Duncan Smith described it as 'claptrap' and a 'conspiracy', but faced with the overwhelming evidence that these targets are still in place, his department has been forced to backtrack.' Commenting on the cabinet minister's claims to Sky News on Sunday 3 April, the union leader said: 'The secretary of state should issue a full and public apology for what was a piece of outrageous spin when he must have known what was happening. When MPs return from their Easter break, he should also be asked to explain to parliament why he tried to mislead the public in his TV interview. We fundamentally oppose the use of targets for welfare sanctions and we call on the Department for Work and Pensions to put an immediate stop to this abuse of the system.' Following an investigation by the Guardian newspaper, DWP last week backtracked and released a statement confirming the practice had been going on in some offices. It said this was due to a misunderstanding between the department and some jobcentre managers and insisted the practice had now stopped. 'A few weeks ago ministers discovered that their message to be clearer about conditionality had been misinterpreted by a small number of Jobcentre Plus offices who had imposed targets for the number of sanction referrals. These targets were immediately removed,' the statement said. 'We are clear that there is no wrong or right level of how many sanctions an office should make and they should only be made where people have not adhered to their jobseeker obligations. We have already taken rapid steps to reinforce this message to our staff. Ministers would not countenance any target for sanctioning customers.'
