GREEN plans to replace benefits with a flat-rate “citizen’s income” will not be included in the party’s general election manifesto, MP Caroline Lucas confirmed yesterday.

Ms Lucas said introducing the non-means-tested £72-a-week payment remained a “longer-term aspiration” for her party.

Defending the idea, she said it would give all a guaranteed income and cut the “huge” cost of administering means-tested benefits.

But the Brighton Pavillion MP revealed the policy, that was mauled in the media last week, would not appear in the Green manifesto when it’s published next month.

“This is not a policy for the general election,” she said.

“What is, is lifting the minimum wage to £10-an-hour by the end of this Parliament and challenging the austerity plans of the other parties.”

Green leader Natalie Bennett struggled to defend the citizen’s income under scrutiny on last week’s BBC Sunday Politics.

The policy was also cited as proof that the Greens are not socialists, as claimed in latest issue of the right-wing Spectator magazine.

Green policy states that the citizen’s income will help to end the “current dependence on economic growth” without causing individual hardship.

Spectator editor Fraser Nelson said it was “no compensation” for potential job losses and did a “huge injustice to generations of socialists and communists.”

Coming out fighting for her party yesterday, Ms Lucas said: “We are going into this election with some radical, visionary ideas, which this political system needs so badly.

“What we’re also going to do, with a handful of MPs is to push Labour to be more progressive.”