JEREMY Corbyn has branded David Cameron and his Conservative Ministers “poverty deniers”, saying their welfare reforms had had disastrous consequences and cost disabled people their lives.

In his first official speech as party leader at the TUC’s annual conference in Brighton, Mr Corbyn also pledged to fight the Tories’ trade union reforms all the way, describing them as a "declaration of war on organised labour" and insisting Labour would repeal them when it won the 2020 General Election.

His 20-minute quick-fire address to delegates, delivered tieless, was originally intended to include a passage invoking Margaret Thatcher's 1980s phrase to warn that the Conservatives still regarded trade unions as "the enemy within".

However, Mr Corbyn – whose original intention to visit Scotland this week has, according to party sources, been ditched because of diary commitments - did not deliver the pre-briefed lines; Labour officials said he was working from notes and had simply "forgot".

On arrival at the conference centre, the new Labour leader received a rapturous welcome and a standing ovation when he reached the stage albeit late.

Addressing delegates as "sisters and brothers", he made clear trade unionism was "in my body".

In a blistering attack on the Prime Minister's welfare cuts, Mr Corbyn said they had made the lives of the poorest and more vulnerable even more miserable. "The disability benefits cuts that have been made over the past five years and the availability of the work test have had some disastrous, appalling consequences, where people have even committed suicide and taken their own lives out of a sense of desperation.

He denounced the Tories' £26,000 a year benefit cap as "social cleansing", which he said Labour would seek to scrap.

"We will bring down the welfare bill in Britain by controlling rents and boosting wages, not by impoverishing families and the most vulnerable," he argued.

Highlighting the class divide, Mr Corbyn told conference: “The elite in our society look with contempt on people with brilliance and ideas just because they don’t speak like them or look like them.”

In a key passage, the Islington North MP delivered an angry retort to jibes that he was a "deficit denier".

"But then they spend billions cutting taxes for the richest families or for the most profitable businesses. What they are is poverty deniers, ignoring the growing queues at food banks, ignoring the growing housing crisis, cutting tax credits when child poverty rose by half a million under the last government to over four million.

"Let's be clear - austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity," he declared.

Mr Corbyn emphasised the importance of trade unions not just at home but also abroad, saying workers should stand in solidarity with others across the world.

Referring to a major fire in the Chinese port of Tianjin last month, which claimed more than 100 lives, Mr Corbyn said: "Those people that died in that dreadful fire in China, where there was a free- market philosophy around the operation of the port, firefighters died trying to protect other workers who should have been protected by decent health and safety conditions."

The London MP said the leadership contest had enthused thousands of people and noted how 30,000 people had joined the party since Saturday’s result, meaning the total membership was now more than 330,000.

He also pointed out the number of people who had voted for him was twice the membership of the Tory Party; that, he insisted, was “something to savour”.

Again hinting that the Labour conference could regain its policy-making powers, Mr Corbyn said he wanted to take a "different approach" and stop policy being set "top down" from the leadership.

"I want everybody to bring their views forward; every union branch, every party branch, every union."

Afterwards, Sir Paul Kenny, the GMB leader, welcomed the speech, describing it as a ”staggeringly different approach to previous Labour Party leaders who have addressed the TUC.

“There were no walkouts this time, it was standing room only. There is very much in Jeremy’s leadership for the working people of this country.”

Len McCluskey, Unite’s General Secretary, added: "It was incredibly refreshing to have a Labour leader embrace trade unions as opposed to the Prime Minister, who used to call us the enemy within."