YOUR correspondent John Young (Letters, December 26) appears not to know the complete disarray that the Department of Work and Pensions is in.

He states that there is an appeals process for people who have had their benefits suspended. But he doesn’t seem to realise that the claimant’s money is stopped by a local office decision, and only after that can the claimant make an appeal. This, sadly, can take weeks, if not months.

How can somebody who has lost their job through no reason of their own live for weeks or months without resorting to the charities such as food banks, as a life-saving last resort?

People do not want and do not like to live on charity.

Maybe Mr Young is not aware that a former job centre worker (not from York) has claimed that the entire staff at a Jobcentre were warned they would be disciplined unless they increased the number of claimants coming off the register, or raised the number threatened with the loss of benefit entitlement.

These instructions are coming from the Tory/Lib Dem government which has written off a minimum of £40 million to date in failed computer systems to, in their words, “improve the benefits system and save money”.

I ask the Jobcentre in York to reveal to how many people in the city have had benefits sanctioned (stopped), therefore reducing the unemployment figures. I doubt they will respond.

Howard Perry, James Place, Dringhouses, York.