The SDLP has hit out at Prime Minister David Cameron's proposals to cease housing and unemployment benefits for those aged between 18 and 25.

Mr Cameron made the remarks at the Conservative Party Conference yesterday, saying it would help people into work.

He said: "It’s time for bold action here. We should ask, as we write our next manifesto, if that option should really exist at all. Instead, we should give young people a clear, positive choice: go to school. Go to college. Do an apprenticeship. Get a job. But just choose the dole? We’ve got to offer them something better than that."

But SDLP Social Development Spokesperson Dolores Kelly responded by saying: "The plans announced by the Prime Minister David Cameron regarding new conditions for the long-term jobless have worrying implications for people living in Northern Ireland.

"The conditions being proposed include community work placements, daily visits to a job centre or taking part in compulsory training. Such proposals are overly onerous and are the latest in a long list of changes which the coalition hopes to roll out in the Welfare Reform Act.

"This latest step by the Conservatives is an attempt to penalise the unemployed rather than acknowledge the failings of the Government’s economic policies. This attitude towards those who have lost their job, young graduates and others who can’t secure work is disgraceful. The lack of empathy displayed by the Tories is quite breath-taking.

"The Welfare Reform Act and its provisions seem more and more to pave the way for the erosion of social security benefits which we in the SDLP have been warning about in the Assembly and at Westminster."

If the Conservative proposals do go ahead, it is unlikely they will be introduced before the 2015 election, as the Liberal Democrats have blocked proposals by Tory ministers to curb Housing Benefit for under-25s.

(IT/MH)