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Ministers have refused to apologise after MPs from across the North East highlighted the “cruel and inhumane” treatment of benefit claimants in the region.

Officials such as Jobcentre staff had been encouraged to strip claimants of benefits for no good reason, MPs said.

In a Commons debate led by Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah, MPs highlighted a series of wrong decisions and abuse of benefit claimants.

They included:

* Veterans injured in Afghanistan or Iraq stripped of benefits after they were told they were fit to work

* A Newcastle man stripped of benefits because he was accused of failing to seek work in the days after his father died

* A man in Bishop Auckland constituency who was a collecting a sick daughter from school and was accused of inventing a “fictional child”

South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck said her constituents had been “humiliated” by job centre staff.

She said: “Constituents of mine have been refused a private room to discuss intimate personal or medial issues ... the general attitude of staff is confrontational and sometimes just downright rude.”

Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery said Jobcentre staff provided a valuable service and took their role seriously - but they were under pressure to “sanction” as many people as possible, suspending their benefits on the grounds that they had broken rules or failed to prove they were seeking work.

The debate, attended by Labour MPs from across the North East, followed long-running complaints that benefit claimants are being sanctioned for no good reason.

(Image: Ben Birchall/PA Wire)

But Work Minister Esther McVey infuriated MPs by refusing to discuss whether the criteria for imposing sanctions were fair, despite repeated requests for her to address this topic.

She denied her department deliberately inflames talk of “scroungers”, saying: “I have never put forward a story like that and I never would.”

Ms Onwurah recalled that she was largely bought up by her mother in a single-parent family in Newcastle which depended on benefits.

She said: “I am so glad she did not have to face the sort of vilification and abuse that benefit claimants face now.”

She added: “I want to know what this government is doing to prevent the demonisation of those who are now claiming benefits.”

Newcastle East MP Nick Brown said one constituent had been told to go to an office in Felling, Gateshead. He walked to the office - because he had no money to pay for public transport - where he was given a telephone number to call.

People with disabilities, but who were judged to be fit to work, were being trained for jobs it was very unlikely they would be able to do, he said.

Julie Elliott, MP for Sunderland Central, said Jobcentre staff were under pressure to sanction claimants.

She said: “They work hard and are put under enormous pressure. Staffing levels have diminished dramatically since 2010.

“We hear anecdotally about the pressures of informal targets on sanctions - we all know they are in place - from people who are too frightened to say something, so they tell us off the record.”

Mrs Lewell-Buck accused the Government of encouraging the public “to think of claimants as spongers or skivers, so that working people struggling to get by will blame the unemployed man or woman next door”.