THE minister in charge of benefits sanctions has admitted there have been “cases where we get it wrong”, when quizzed about poverty and homelessness rising under the Tories.

David Gauke was challenged about whether the sanctions regime - seen as capricious and perverse by critics - had contributed to the problems.

Since 2010, rough sleeping has risen 134 per cent and the number of children living in temporary accommodation by 70 per cent.

The Work and Pension Secretary said the suspension of benefits for claimants who failed to attend interviews or seek work was intended to change people’s behaviour, and said people with mental health problems could be helped by the structure of being in work.

He said: “We have a welfare system that is based on conditionality, and rightly so. We pay money to people but there are certain conditions that are in place.

"We do expect people to comply with those conditions.

"In some cases where those conditions are not met, it is appropriate to have a sanction."

He added: "That's not to say that there aren't hard cases, cases where we get it wrong, we want to work very hard to eliminate that."

Expert psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and counsellors have previously warned sanctions could damage the mental health of claimants.

Mr Gauke said: "On the subject of mental health - and this is a sensitive point, and I'm not going to pretend that we have always got this right in every individual case - but we do know that getting people into work, giving people the benefit of working, the structure that provides, the self-esteem that that provides, work can really help mental health as well.

"When it comes to the sanctions regime, actually we've seen fewer sanctions over 2017 than we did in 2016 and 2015, so the number of sanctions is coming down."

DWP figures show just 0.4 per cent of jobseeker's allowance claimants faced sanctions.