A Labour minister was accused of being “more right wing than Michael Gove” in a brutal attack over benefits cuts. Ellie Reeves, the Labour Party chairwoman, was savaged by LBC presenter Andrew Marr over welfare reforms. More than three million families could lose out on up to £1,720 a year as part of the Chancellor’s plan to slash spending by £4.8 billion.

The Government’s benefit cuts are set to push 250,000 people into relative poverty by the end of the decade, the Department for Work and Pensions has revealed.

This includes 50,000 children, the Government’s own impact assessment has said.

Under the most controversial reforms - restricting eligibility to Personal Independence Payment benefits - the document says 370,000 people will lose support with the average loss of £4,500-per-year. It will also impact an estimated 430,000 people in the future who will not get the PIP benefits they would have previously been entitled to.

LBC Presenter Andrew Marr said: “A pretty savage attack on welfare. Michael Gove, the former Conservative minister, has today said that had he been in a Conservative Government that was going to hit the poorest in the country and the disabled, in the way this Government is, he would have resigned from it.

“You’re more right wing than Michael Gove.”

Ellie Reeves responded: “I don’t accept that. We’ve got a million young people out of work or education, 1 in 10 working age people not in work.

“A thousand new PIP claimants each day. To sit back and do nothing, to accept the status quo, and to leave a generation of young people out of work would not be the right thing or the moral thing to do.

“Which is why we’re putting a billion pounds in to supporting people get into employment.

“We know that when people are in employment, it halves their risk of being in poverty.”

Spending on personal independence payments (PIP) – to help disabled people with day-to-day support – is projected to almost double to £34bn by 2029-30.

Spending on working-age health-related benefits overall rose from £36bn in 2019–20 to £48bn in 2023–24 and is projected to rise to even further, to more than £60bn, by 2029.

The basic rate of universal credit will be cut from a projected £107 per week in 2029-30 to £106 a week. Next month there will be a £7 a week increase, to £92 a week.

The universal credit incapacity benefit top-up for new claimants, to be halved from next year, will be frozen at £50 per week until the end of this parliament.

Figures within Labour are furious about the party's welfare reforms, with some already vowing to vote against it in Parliament.

Labour’s Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: “From my time in Westminster, and I was probably guilty of it at the time, I think benefits policy in this country has too much, under all governments, been written to create headlines to please certain newspapers and not actually to do the job of encouraging the recovery of people back to a better position in their lives.

“I think once you leave as a minister and become a mayor, you just don’t think ‘will this please that paper?’

“It’s a completely different, bottom-up offer that you give to people.

“It is having the courage to step outside of a ‘you’ve got to have a punitive language linked to benefits’ [mentality] – that’s been the Westminster way for quite a long time.

“If you really want to help people, if you really want to save money and get more people into work, I think you have to come at it a completely different way.”