NEW Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith today paid a Labour conference tribute to former Blackburn MP Barbara Castle who died earlier this year.

He did so as he pledged major reforms for pensions and housing benefits. Mr Smith highlighted the late Baroness's battle as Social Security Secretary in the 1970s to get child benefit paid to the mother rather than the father.

He told the Blackpool Conference: "Our recent hike in child benefits has helped all children.

"We remember Barbara Castle and the battle she fought to pay child benefit into the purse not the wallet.

"Let our child benefit increase stand as a lasting testament to her work.''

He promised that later this year there would be a green paper aimed at making occupational pension simpler, ending the cliff edge between work and retirement and improving the treatment of women by the pension system.

He pledged that the green paper would be "bold and radical" but stressed that there were big challenges and tough choices to be made if we were to provide a secure retirement for the increasingly large proportion of older people among the population.

And Mr Smith also promised the biggest reform of housing benefit since it was founded with a major crackdown on rogue landlords who make fortunes cheating the system.