Charles Windsor challenged to declare full income as he becomes first monarch to release tax payments
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Meacher’s ‘no conviction’ plan sparks media debate
MP urged juries not to jail sanctions victims driven to theft
LEFT Labour MP Michael Meacher provoked a major public debate yesterday after he suggested that juries should consider not convicting benefits claimants driven to theft by sanctions.
On BBC London's Vanessa Feltz show, successive listeners called in to savage the draconian social security sanctions doled out by benefit offices for trivial offences such as "filling in forms incorrectly."
Almost a million claimants have been sanctioned by the Department for Work and Pensions in the past year - with payments cut off for up to nine weeks at a time.
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DYLAN MURPHY reports that far from helping people back into work, the sanctions regime is inflicting unnecessary trauma on working-class families
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