Iain Duncan Smith has dismissed an online petition calling on him to live on £53 a week on the grounds that he has experienced life on the breadline during two periods of unemployment.

As the petition hosted at www.change.org secured nearly 300,000 signatures, the work and pensions secretary told his local newspaper that it was a distraction because he had already lived on the equivalent of low benefits.

The petition says: "This petition calls for Iain Duncan Smith, the current Work and Pensions Secretary, to prove his claim of being able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week."

Duncan Smith told the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian: "This is a complete stunt which distracts attention from the welfare reforms which are much more important and which I have been working hard to get done. I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this. I know what it is like to live on the breadline."

Didn't I read somewhere that the guy who challenged him is a drunken gambler?

This happened in the 1980s IIRC. A Tory minister said he could live on the benefit rate at the time, tried to, failed and resigned.

I'd tell you more but where I am this week has really crappy Internet connectivity, so someone else may have to do the leg work on this one.

I doubt it. Especially now that people on benefits have to pay council tax which will take more than a pound out of that £53. Then add in the housing benefit changes and they could have even less.

I wish her luck with that, but I expect the parameters would be well defined so that success is easily achieved.

Hopefully she'll publish a full account of what the money was spent on.

But still you'll never get it right
'cos when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
If you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view

I have to say though, even if IDS or Curry does it, they'd still be missing the point. At the end of the day, they can do it for whatever limited period and then go back to their more privileged lives. They know they have escape, they have an exit strategy. When you're actually unemployed with no job prospects and living on £53 a week you think it won't ever stop, that it will just go on and on, grinding you down until there's nothing left. That's what drives people to all sorts of horrible, desperate things. That's why the petition is actually that IDS should do it for a year - it needs to be along enough period for it to actually feel like a hopeless position, not just a temporary ascetism to be endured then forgotten.