WHO will speak up for the millions of people forced to survive on miserly benefits, in Britain’s new dole age?

Not the Government, obviously, as it plots to break a long-standing promise to increase next year’s benefits in line with runaway inflation.

But not the Labour Party either, which, with the honourable exceptions of some North-East MPs, appears to be too cowardly to risk hysterical tabloid accusations that it is on the side of “scroungers”.

Benefit claimants are in the firing line once again after the CPI measure of inflation hit the unexpectedly high mark of 5.2 per cent in September, the chosen measure for next spring’s increase.

This set Chancellor’s George Osborne’s political antennae twitching, as he realised that benefits would rise significantly faster than wages. Public-sector workers are in the middle of a painful two-year pay freeze, while the salaries of those in the private sector are creeping up by just 1.8 per cent.

It is unlikely that benefits will be frozen, such hints are probably a softening-up exercise, but Mr Osborne is considering pegging increases at, say, 2.5 per cent. Such a move would undoubtedly be popular with rightwing cheerleaders and, with some people watching their living standards slide, would, temptingly, put Labour in a pickle.

But it would be a depressing ratcheting up of the Government’s war on benefit claimants, at a time when the economic crisis is forcing more and more people to survive on state help.

Already, Mr Osborne has slashed benefits by up to £6bn a year by uprating in line with the Consumer Price Index, rather than the higher Retail Price Index inflation measure that includes housing costs.

Only this week, researchers warned that curbs on incapacity benefit will “impoverish vast numbers of households”, highlighting the North-East as a blackspot. And the parents of disabled children will lose around £1,400 when tax credits are cut, plunging thousands of families below the poverty line, according to the Children’s Society.

It is for these sorts of reasons that experts fear poverty will explode in the years to come.

But even that is not the worst aspect of the Government’s tactics.

No, the nadir is that ministers are stoking the tabloid myth that people on benefits are scroungers, just as rising unemployment forces dozens of people to fight for every job in some areas.

Yes, some people refuse to work, but Britain has tough laws to cut their benefits.

Anyway, that problem pales into insignificance next to the real crisis, namely that, for many, there is simply no work.

And jobseekers’ allowance, at just £67.50 a week, is puny, precisely because it is uprated with inflation, not earnings, which are normally higher. Yet, the moment that trend is reversed, Mr Osborne is, disgracefully, trying to break his own rules.

MEANWHILE, spies from GCHQ have been brought in to make the Government’s latest benefits shake-up “fraudproof”, surprised MPs were told yesterday.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the intelligence agency was helping out because applications for the new Universal Credit will be made online. He said: “Cyber fraud is an important area. We are talking to everybody, from the private sector to GCHQ, about how and what is the best point at which you protect that information.”