SOCIAL security staff union PCS demanded a full independent inquiry into Britain’s cruel benefit sanctions yesterday as new evidence emerged of the system’s role in massaging down jobless figures.

General secretary Mark Serwotka used a Commons appearance to urge an investigation into the growing scandal which has seen benefits decision-makers handed “astonishing” targets to strip payouts in 80 per cent of cases referred by jobcentres.

Sanctions for breaches such as missing an interview or appointment have been applied more than a million times since October 2012, leaving thousands penniless.

But appeal rates have reached more than 50 per cent.

Mr Serwotka (pictured) blamed ministers’ “obsession for devising a system for the tiny, tiny proportion of people who may be seeking to flout the rules.”

Staff “came to this job to help people back into work and now they feel that their job is to trip people up and to find reasons why you can sanction their benefit.”

His intervention came as Oxford University Professor David Stuckler estimated that thousands could be missing from official unemployment figures after being driven into the margins of society by sanctions.

New research had revealed that 43 per cent of the hundreds of thousands hit were “leaving the system,” and a fifth of those did not end up in a job.

“That puts them in a very vulnerable position,” Prof Stuckler said.

The result could mean that official jobless totals underestimate the reality by tens of thousands.

Mr Serwotka predicted that a far-reaching inquiry into all the issues surrounding sanctions would produce “profound” results.

“The system’s fundamentally flawed. We don’t feel that previous select committee reports or Department for Work and Pensions management whenever they’re asked really ever do look into many of the issues we are raising.

“It’s therefore time that was done independently.”

Frustrated MPs on the Commons work and pensions committee echoed the PCS leader’s call in the face of repeated ministerial denials that sanctions targets exist.

Chair Dame Anne Begg explained to Mr Serwotka: “We thought that we had got the minister to agree — we discovered that she hadn’t.”

Tories gloat over stats as young jobless total rises

YOUTH unemployment leapt by 4 per cent in the last quarter, figures baying Tories bragged were fresh evidence “the plan is working.”

Seasonally adjusted stats from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed joblessness among 16- to 24-year-olds up 30,000 between September and November to 764,000 with a further 674,000 not in education or work.

Wider unemployment rose in the east Midlands, east of England, Wales and Scotland over the same period.

Yet bullish Tories gloated in the Commons following a 58,000 fall in the official all-Britain headline rate to 1.91 million — below 6 per cent for the first time since 2008.

“We are the party that is putting the country back to work, Labour is the party that would put it all at risk,” David Cameron crowed at Prime Minister’s questions.

Labour’s Ed Miliband accused the PM of “total complacency” after “five years of failure under this government.

“Under this Prime Minister we are a country of foodbanks and bank bonuses — a country of tax cuts for millionaires while millions are paying more,” the opposition leader said.

For the first time since 2008 earnings were also higher than inflation, which has fallen to a record low.

But TUC head of economics Nicola Smith said: “At this rate of progress it will still be at least another parliament before wages are even back to where they were before the crisis.”

She added: “There are now concerning signs that young people are being left behind.”