ED MILIBAND was charged with aiding the destruction of Britain’s universal welfare system yesterday after revealing plans to strip struggling youngsters of jobseekers’ cash. 

The Labour leader said access to jobseeker’s allowance for Britain’s 100,000 unemployed 18 to 21-year-olds will be cut completely if his party wins next year’s general election. 

They would instead receive a “youth allowance” that would be means-tested based on their parents’ income and dependent on taking part in training schemes. 

Mr Miliband argued it would start to restore the contribution-based welfare system set out in the 1942 Beveridge report — the bedrock of Britain’s welfare state.

“We talk about the problem of people getting something for nothing,” he said at the London launch of the IPPR think tank’s Condition of Britain report.

“And we are right to do so.

“But there is a problem that politicians rarely talk about of people getting nothing for something.

“How many times have I heard people say: ‘for years and years, I paid in and then when the time came and I needed help I got nothing out’?”

But Mr Miliband’s rhetoric failed to win over his own MPs and party faithful, who accused him of pandering to benefit-bashing Tories intent on destroying the welfare state. 

Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn backed getting young people into training or university but insisted it “should not be made a basis on which you have access to universal benefits.

“I cannot agree with the idea we have a special form of punishment for young people,” he told the Morning Star. 

“They already get a lower housing allowance, already get lower benefits in all respects. I believe that to be wrong.”

And pressure group Compass accused the Labour leader on coming down “hardest on the poorest.”

Chairman Neal Lawson said: “More means-testing just erodes the notion of universal social security when we need it more than ever. 

“The young are the victims of this insecure, low-wage economy — now they are its double victims.”

Mr Miliband also announced plans for higher rates of jobseeker’s allowance for unemployed people who have previously been in work for two years or more.