Mel B 'asks government to help the poor'

Monday, October 26 2009, 06:28 GMT

By Catriona Wightman

WENN / Daniel Deme

Mel B has urged the government to do more to help the poor.

The former Spice Girl recently spent a week with a family living on benefits for the ITV1 series Seven Days On The Breadline.

She admitted that she had initially been shocked by the condition of the house.

"I hadn't been told anything about the family I would be looking after or the state of the house I would be living in," she wrote in the Daily Mail.

"It was only when I arrived that I realised it had damp rising up the walls, was infested by mice and was, frankly, horribly unkempt."

However, Mel B insisted that the family wasn't lazy. She criticised the lack of community centres in the area and said that the people she met were low in self-esteem, bored and stuck in a "rut".

"I hope the show will make people think twice about people on benefits, rather than calling them lazy moneygrabbers," she said. "I think the majority could be encouraged to do a bit more if the Government would step in.

"In many ways it seems we've gone backwards rather than forwards. There are as many, if not more, people living on the breadline than ever. It does not bode well for the future because this group of disenfranchised youngsters will soon go on to have children themselves.

"If you do not give people a way out, educate them, provide them with somewhere to live, and a community centre for them to visit and be stimulated, then how can you expect them to have the urge to get up and do anything with their lives?"