BENEFIT sanctions are causing "severe financial hardship", MPs warn today after almost 19,000 punishments were imposed in Bradford in just two years.

New figures show jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) is being docked 787 times every month in the city, normally for four weeks for a first offence.

And, across the district, claimants have been stripped of benefits on 44,824, occasions including in Batley (1,691), Brighouse (699), Keighley (2,388), Liversedge (1,383) and Shipley (1,630).

Ministers say sanctions are imposed on people who dodge job centre appointments or avoid finding a job, to tackle a "something for nothing" culture.

But a committee of MPs today questions whether the punishments are being applied fairly and proportionately and demands a full independent review.

The report, by the work and pensions select committee, criticises the Government for removing benefits for four weeks - instead of just one - without first testing their likely impacts on claimants; calls for trials of written warnings and non-financial sanctions and for hardship payments to be made sooner.

Dame Anne Begg, the committee’s Labour chairman, warned benefits were being taken from people “who may have little or no other income” – sending many to food banks.

She added: "It should avoid causing severe financial hardship. The system as currently applied does not always achieve this.

"No claimant should have their benefit payment reduced to zero where they are at risk of severe financial hardship, to the extent of not being able to feed themselves or their families, or pay their rent."

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "As the report recognises, sanctions are a vital backstop in the welfare system and are only used in a small minority of cases where claimants don't do all they can to look for work.

"Every day Jobcentre Plus advisers work hard to help people into jobs, and we continue to spend around £94 billion a year on working-age benefits to provide a safety net that supports millions of people."

But the treasurer of the Bradford Metropolitan Foodbank, Keith Thompson, said he had "no doubt at all" the rise in foodbags being handed out in the city was because benefits were being squeezed and too many sanctions inflicted on people unfairly.

When the foodbank first started in 2004 it gave out one bag a day - in 2014 it shot up to 10,000 bags a year.

Mr Thompson said: "It's disgraceful. Some sanctions are given if people are just a few minutes late at the job centre, one man we know of had arrived early but been stood in a queue and he was still punished for that through no fault of his own."