A LEADING churchman, who has held several posts in East Lancashire, has condemned the Coalition government’s purge on benefits.

Canon Rev Ed Saville believes David Cameron’s government is “stirring up” ill feeling against the “undeserving poor” as part of its crackdown on state handouts.

The former Rural Dean of Pendle and vicar at St Luke’s in Brierfield is a leading figure on Blackburn Diocese’s board of responsibility. And the veteran minister was the author of a report last year exposing a north-south divide on poverty levels. He has spoken out as the government seeks to ensure that the total amount of benefit payments do not exceed the average working wage.

Canon Saville said: “They are stirring things up through the media, trying to whip up these feelings against the ‘undeserving poor’.

“When you see where all these benefit changes are taking place then there is more than half a billion pounds, around £520million, which is being taken out of the Lancashire economy.” His report for the Church Urban Fund in May 2012 detailed how parishes like St Barnabas in Blackburn, and St Mark’s and St Andrew with St Margaret in Burnley, were among the most deprived in the UK.

The canon’s attack is not the first by a senior East Lancashire minister on Coalition priorities.

The former Bishop of Blackburn, the Right Rev Nicholas Reade, not only questioned Mr Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ crusade but later condemned the amount of government cuts to youth services.