Austin Mitchell MP

"Take from the rich and give to the poor" Dur: 3'33"

Poor Must Share Wealth, Says Labour MP

The intervention by Great Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell comes hot on the heels of criticisms by former deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley prompted by the announcement by the Government of a new unit to tackle "social exclusion".

Mr Mitchell said he wanted "redistribution - which actually involves increasing taxes and transferring money from the rich to the poor - or the expansion of public spending". He added: "Either way it, does involve financial transfers to the poor."

Earlier this week, Minister Without Portfolio Peter Mandelson announced the Government plan to tackle poverty and rescue Britain's "underclass".

Labour continues to debate how to tackle social inequality

Mr Mandelson said that while Labour was committed to protecting the poor and doing more for those on low incomes, the economic circumstances had to be right to make this possible.

Mr Hattersley, who has consistently called on the Government to tackle social inequality, criticised Mr Mandelson's speech as a "series of generalities" with "more public relations than policy" and warned that there had to be an improvement in benefit rates.

Mr Mitchell told BBC Radio's Today programme: "You can't build a fairer society on the cheap. And all these theories, whether it's communitarian theory or stakeholder theory, are in a sense dilutions of egalitarian theory, dilutions of equality, because they are saying we're about inclusion and inclusion implies responsibilities as well as rights, but it doesn't really solve the problem."

He added: "Of course we're about inclusion - we want everybody to be active participants and members of society. But their problem is not only that they're excluded, that they're alienated, that they're not connected and not benefiting in the same way as everybody else, it is that they don't have any money."

"The redistribution has got to be a redistribution of wealth which has been taken away in the last 20 years from those at the bottom and transferred to those at the top," he said.