Jeremy Hunt has been criticised for saying the controversial tax credit cuts being implemented by the government will make people work harder.
The Health Secretary, who was speaking at a fringe event at the Tory party conference, said the changes to tax credit would send a "very important cultural signal".
"My wife is Chinese," he said. "Are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard?"
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Hunt also suggested that the tax credit recipients lacked self-respect. "It matters if you are earning [money] yourself, because if you are earning it yourself you are independent and that is the first step towards self-respect," the cabinet minister said.
His comments sparked a furious response from trade union bosses and opposition ministers, The Guardian reports. Unite's general secretary Len McCluskey branded them a "disgusting insult" to millions of the poorest workers who will lose out under the new changes.
"In a country that already works some of the longest hours in the western world, these comments are simply an outrageous slur on the all too many workers juggling two and three jobs to put food on the table and a roof over their kids' heads," he said.
Labour's shadow work and pension's secretary Owen Smith said it was a "kick in the teeth for working families to hear Jeremy Hunt patronisingly say that the reason they are struggling to pay the bills is because they are not working hard enough".
But Hunt has stood by his comments, insisting that they had been "wilfully misinterpreted" and that "there was never a suggestion that people don't work hard enough".
It hasn't been a particular good week for Hunt, according to the Evening Standard. The newspaper reports that the "red-faced" health secretary emerged from a train toilet after accidentally pulling the emergency cord instead of the flush.
"It's a good job he didn't actually need a doctor," said one passenger, referring to Hunt's ongoing row with junior doctors over pay, "I'm not sure anyone would have volunteered."
