An SNP MP has slammed a Tory welfare minister after they could not say whether they had ever met someone sanctioned under the UK Government's benefits system.
David Linden, the party's social justice spokesman, said the admission showed how "out of touch" Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is.
The Conservative minister admitted yesterday he didn't know if he had met anyone who had received benefits sanctions in a work and pensions committee meeting on Wednesday morning.
He also didn't know the average amount a person loses when they're sanctioned.
Linden said: "You're a secretary of state that generally gets out and manages to visit job centres and organisations.
"When was the last time that you met someone who had been sanctioned at that point?"
Stride replied: "I think the honest answer to that is I'm not sure that I can recollect when I might of met somebody who's been sanctioned."
Linden then asked: "You've never met anyone who's been sanctioned?"
Stride said: "I don't actually know. The level of sanctions is currently about six per cent. It was prior to the pandemic about three per cent."
Linden insisted: "Can you just confirm to me: you've never actually had an interaction with somebody who's been sanctioned."
"I don't know because when I've met those that have been going through the system, I would typically say 'Oh my name's Mel Stride, I'm the Secretary of State, have you been sanctioned?'
"So I don't know the answer to that I'm afraid."
Linden then asked: "Do you know the average amount someone loses when they're sanctioned?"
Stride went to ask one of his civil servants, when Linden said: "I'm asking you the question."
Stride replied: "I appreciate that. Off the top of my head I wouldn't know what the average is."
Linden said: "It's £600. If someone's starting from a standing start, where they only receive state support, they're not incredibly wealthy, perhaps like yourself, and you remove all of that state support from them, what then happens at that stage, Secretary of State?"
Stride replied: "As I say, there's a hardship fund. There is a measured and proportionate approach that is taken within the system as to whether a sanction is applied in the first place."
He added: "Sanctions... are there for purpose of trying to have a system that ultimately ends up with more people going into work and work being the way out of the kind of difficulties and pressures that you're rightly describing."
Afterwards Linden said Stride was "hopelessly out of touch" and accused him of plunging people "into abject poverty.
He said: “Even by the Tories’ appalling standards, this was a car crash appearance from a Secretary of State who presides over a sanctions regime which is surging and pushing more people into poverty.
“It’s clear from his answers that the Secretary of State is hopelessly out of touch and hasn’t grasped that getting more people into work is made a hell of a lot harder when he’s just plunged them into abject poverty.
“The only way to deliver a fair and compassionate social security system is for Scotland to have the full powers of a normal independent country - not be governed by out of touch Tories we didn’t vote for.”
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