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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, welfare reform is a decades old battle of course at Westminster but is it motivated simply by a desire to contain the growing costs or is it driven by deeper ideological argument? Well the former Work Minister, Nick Brown, is here with me, a very good morning to you. How does this play for Labour, is it in danger of appearing to be on the wrong side of the argument given the wider public’s feeling about welfare and its recipients?

NICK BROWN: I understand public feelings, when times are tough and people are working very hard and the money doesn’t go as far as it used to and they’re not getting as much as they used to, they resent people who seem to be getting something for nothing out of the system but if you look a little more closely I don't think that is a fair characterisation of current welfare provision. The key intervention I believe ought to be in the Labour market, we ought to make sure there is a job for every person that is currently out of work and try very hard to get them …

DM: But that’s like saying when it’s very cold we must try to make sure that the sun shines but it isn’t and we have a ballooning welfare bill and it ballooned of course during the Labour years. If you look at the increase in housing benefit, I know often pointed out by the government, and disability benefits, the way people were shifted on to that, there was a huge increase in that social security budget.

NB: That’s true but the principal beneficiary of that are the landlords, not the person who is being housed. You can’t seriously be saying that people should be left without housing.

DM: Indeed not but the bill shot up and has stayed high and it seems that the coalition are trying to address it, that’s what they say but it’s unclear what the response from Labour is.

NB: Well you cannot say the bill is going up and therefore the response is to somehow punish the poor, that is not only morally wrong but it’s an ineffective and economically illiterate policy to pursue as well.

DM: So the response should be to hope for growth?

NB: No, the state should actively intervene and stimulate investment in the economy, to take the north east of England, particularly in the private sector, the economy and to strive proactively and indeed some of the things the government are doing do go along that path, to make sure that people are helped into a job that they can do and earn more money than they could ever get on benefits.

DM: But specific measures you feel are demonising the poor, are discriminating against the poor, the cap on increases, the 1% that’s been fixed now, the £500 per week … those are wrong?

NB: And the so-called bedroom tax, it is iniquitous.

DM: All those are wrong?

NB: Single people find themselves in say two bedroomed accommodation, not because they didn’t ask for a one bedroom property but because the provider of social housing by and large has got two bedroomed housing stock. The average household size is 1.9 and so perfectly rationally, when these things were being built they built two bedroomed ones but it’s eight quid a week that the tenant has to pay back to the local authority or to the housing association. Now it is a relatively small sum of money but it is almost impossible and on top of that you have got the £2 claw back from the council tax payment and on top of that they have to meet their electricity costs, it doesn’t leave a lot for discretionary spend.

DM: So do you feel there is a wider political argument going on here, that so many on your side of the political divide might say that this is ideological?

NB: I think it is morally wrong to demonise the poor. In the north east of England, in my constituency I’ve got seven and a half thousand people on Job Seekers Allowance, out of work, looking for work. The number of job vacancies in the whole of the region is ten thousand. There is a grotesque mismatch between those seeking work and the number of jobs available. The correct thing to do is to intervene with the private sector to create the jobs that people can do and to help them into obtaining them.

DM: So do you not accept, I mean it’s impossible to quantify, that there may be or that there are some people who live on benefits who do it as a life choice, who actually look at the world of work and say, do you know what, I’m better off or nearly the same on benefits, which am I going to go for? Well I’m going to go for closing the curtains and staying at home and watching daytime TV.

NB: And I accept that there are other people that through depression and the inability to find employment are just driven into that position but we should help them out of it, not extrapolate a welfare system from their circumstances. They are not typical.

DM: But is it not right then within that system, having accepted that there are some people – we don’t know how many – who are abusing that system, to try to root them out, to try to weed them out the system?

NB: I am not going to defend abuses of the system, whether it’s not striving to find employment or whether it’s doing something worse like actively behaving dishonestly, of course that is wrong and of course you should clamp down on it but the starting point for any rational approach to this is getting people into work and that means the state has to be far more proactive than it’s being at the moment.

DM: Okay, but there is also this issue, for instance people in work on limited incomes say the number of children I have for instance is limited by my income. I make or we make choices between us, me and my partner make choices not to have more children than we already have because we can’t afford it. That doesn’t seem to apply to some people on benefits, however many children you have the state will always support you.

NB: Again this is not typical of the system as a whole, in fact it’s the exceptional nature of these cases that make them so startling and so open to being reported when they’re uncovered or when something goes wrong. Now the way to deal with that I think is not to take the money away from the children, what would they live on if the state didn’t provide money? Are you seriously saying they should be left to go without food and clothing? That’s a monstrous thing to say. I do think it would be right where people are suspected of manipulating the system in this way that you attach conditionality to the payments to ensure they are spent on caring for the children, clothing them and feeding them and housing and sheltering them and so on and that the children’s welfare is being properly looked after. In other words you close down the scam by invigilation rather than by punishment.

DM: Lastly while you’re with us Mr Brown, having worked very closely with the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, do you agree with Tony Blair’s comments recently that if he’d still been Prime Minister he might have limited the damage at the last election, he might have done better than Gordon Brown?

NB: I haven’t got the faintest idea. I was very good friends with both of them when we started off and I’m still at least very good friends with Gordon, I’m a big supporter of Gordon’s, a big admirer of his.

DM: But you don’t think that Tony Blair would have done a bit better in the 2010 elections?

NB: I haven’t the faintest idea and nor have you.

DM: Well there you go. Nick Brown, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.