The Ministry of Social Development won't provide examples of how children suffer when their parents are hit by benefit sanctions because it would be too much work to gather the information.
Every year the Government punishes thousands and thousands of beneficiaries for an array of offences such as missing an appointment or seminar or turning down a job offer by cutting their benefits.
When a beneficiary has children their benefit can be cut in half - the punishment is called a sanction.
Concerns have repeatedly been raised about whether children are being endangered by the policy.
In November 2021 the Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni said she was worried her own Government was harming large numbers of innocent children by sanctioning their parents because they had a warrant out for their arrest.
Sepuloni said she wanted to change the law but needed her officials to do more work.
Just weeks later, the Children's Commissioner Judge Frances Eivers urged the Ministry of Social Development to do its best to ensure children weren't suffering after its chief executive Debbie Power revealed her ministry didn't even check on the welfare of children whose parent's benefit they'd slashed.
In late 2022, 1News asked MSD if it was now aware of any cases of children being harmed by sanctions.
MSD's general manager of client service delivery, Graham Allpress, responded that "where households are affected by benefit sanctions, this does result in a reduction in household income, and we are aware in some cases this can affect children".
But when 1News asked how those children were being affected MSD refused to provide even one example.
It said while its case managers do speak to families about the impacts the sanctions are having on them it does not collate their responses centrally.
"As such we are not able to provide more detail to you, as searching individual clients files would involve excessive collation."
1News challenged this position with the Ombudsman, querying whether there were other ways to bring examples of about tamariki being harmed by sanctions to light, such as email trails or MSD releasing anecdotal information.
MSD assured the Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier there was no other way that it could release any information about how beneficiaries' kids are harmed by sanctions and the Chief Ombudsman agreed with its decision to withhold it.
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