Brown to stop Blair crime plan

Gordon Brown has privately vowed to ensure that plans to strip state benefits from the parents of child criminals and truants never become reality.

The Chancellor, who has masterminded ground-breaking policies to target benefits at the poorest families as a step towards ending child poverty, is understood to be fiercely hostile to the proposals that emerged from Downing Street before the local elections.

Several senior members of the Cabinet share his scepticism, putting them directly at odds with the Prime Minister.

At a meeting with Labour backbenchers last week, Mr Brown made clear that the measure did not have his support.

The Chancellor, when asked about plans to take child benefit from the parents of truants, or to dock housing benefit from anti-social families who terrorise estates, was said to be "stony-faced". "His look was one of studied disdain."

He said there were already powers, seldom used, to deal with these problems but would not be drawn further.

MPs, however, have taken that as a signal that the proposal is "dead in the water". "It's seen as totally unworkable and doesn't stand a cat in hell's chance," one said. Another added: "Gordon just won't stand for it."

Mr Brown's allies, including Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, are now fighting a behind-the-scenes campaign to block the move.

At a lunch last week, Mr Darling said other methods, perhaps based on American models, were being looked at as a way of using the benefits system to win the battle against youth crime and truancy.

He said there was agreement in principle that people had both "rights and responsibilities", but added that any response had to be "practical". For the second time ­ the first was in a BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview on the issue ­ Mr Darling pointedly refused publicly to endorse the policy.

Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, has become the latest Cabinet minister privately to indicate that she is not in favour of the move.

A Government source said: "I'm not sure that anybody has ruled it in. Everyone wants to tackle street crime and truancy, but they are not agreed on the best way of doing it. The details are not there yet."

There is also growing dissent on the issue among Labour MPs.

Dr Lynne Jones, the Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, has tabled a protest motion in the House of Commons, which already has the support of 47 MPs, stressing that the removal of benefits from the poorest families was "counter-productive". It also voiced support for "child benefit to remain an unconditional universal benefit that encourages self-sufficiency".

But Tony Blair's supporters on the issue claim that initial worries about the proposals, particularly in the light of the mocking that followed the announcement that yobs were to be marched to cashpoints to pay immediate fines, were unfounded.

Blairites said the policy had played well on the doorstep during the local election campaign. People were in favour, they insist, of tougher measures to deal with truancy and the related blight of youth crime.