Purnell defends welfare reforms

Work and pensions secretary James Purnell has said that plans to drastically reform the benefits system will transform the lives of millions of people.

Speaking ahead of the government's welfare green paper, which includes plans to make people 'work for the dole', Purnell said the reforms would focus on "support and responsibility".

And he warned that people who did not take their individual responsibility seriously could have their benefits stopped.

"I'm saying 'support and responsibility'," he told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show. "And if people don't live up to that expectation... then of course people can lose their benefits.

"For people who are looking for work, we will be saying to people if they play the system that they will have to work to get their benefits.

"So there's a very clear sanction at the end of the line. But the key thing is that in an ideal world you don't want to use the sanction, you want people to take up the support."

Purnell also denied suggestions that the move would be unpopular among backbenchers.

"I think that people who see the way incapacity benefit or drug addiction or deep unemployment can scar communities are desperate to turn that round and when I speak to my colleagues they want a system that provides support for people, but also responsibility," he said.

"And what the Tories want to do is to be responsible but not to provide the support.

"David Cameron wants to get rid of the tax credits which would help people to be lifted out of poverty and to get on. We want to provide both, and that's an approach which lots of my labour colleagues wholeheartedly back."

Speaking on the same programme, the Conservative leader said his party would support the measures but claimed that the government had stolen Tory ideas.

"James Purnell should know, and the government should know, that if they have a problem with their backbenchers, then the Conservative Party under my leadership will do the right thing and will back them up and make sure we reform welfare properly," Cameron said.

Commenting on the green paper, he said he was "absolutely thrilled" that the government "has taken up our ideas".

"What [Mr Purnell] has done is very much taken the ideas we came up with in January, that are very clearly thought through and involve tough choices," he said.