Labour's 'secret plan' to make claiming benefits a human right

The charge was levelled by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, after an Opposition front bench spokesman said the controversial move would need “really careful handling” and would have to be “bomb proof.”

Willie Bain, a shadow Scottish minister, was disclosed to have said two leading Labour politicians had asked him to examine whether “economic and social rights can be put into law”.

The request came from Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, and Jon Cruddas, the MP who was appointed the party’s policy co-ordinator by Ed Miliband last year, Mr Bain said.

Mr Bain told a fellow guest at a gala dinner that Labour needed to tread carefully over the move because the Conservatives would try to brand the idea a “scrounger’s charter.”

Disclosure of the Labour plan - which has never publicly been discussed by the party - follows months where the party has been on the back foot over welfare, with the Conservatives keen to make the issue a key battleground in the run-up to the next general election.


(2013-07-14/telegraph)