The proposals will become law in early 2011 if parliament votes them through.

The plans include banning wives who join their husbands, mainly from India and Pakistan, from receiving child benefit and a wide range of other state aid unless they learn English, support British values and do voluntary work in the community.

Under existing laws, wives are automatically given indefinite leave to remain after two years.

Vaz said the proposal to stop wives from receiving child benefit -- a fixed weekly sum that every British mother is entitled to -- would create 'an administrative nightmare'.

Damien Green, the home affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative party, rejected the proposals, saying: 'This is an act of desperation by a government that knows it has let immigration run out of control.'

The proposals come as Labour poll ratings continue to fall ahead of general elections due by June 3, 2010.

A Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll last week found that 70 percent of voters now disapprove of the government's record, with only 17 percent approving -- a rating that is identical to that of the government led by Conservative Prime Minister John Major in July 1996.

Nine months later, the Conservatives were swept from power by Labour.