BRITAIN:THE BRITISH government was expecting a backlash from its own MPs last night after setting out plans to get tough on welfare claimants.
Work and pensions secretary James Purnell said he was determined to ensure life on benefits was "not an option" as part of efforts to reach 80 per cent employment.
The long-term unemployed would be made to do voluntary work such as picking up litter, and private firms could receive "rewards" worth tens of thousands of pounds for every person they returned to the workforce.
There would also be a crackdown on Britain's "sickness" culture, with incapacity benefit scrapped by 2013 and replaced with a new Employment Support Allowance - which will involve GP checks focusing on what work recipients could do rather than what they could not.
Only full-time carers and disabled people "with the greatest needs" will be exempt from being expected to find work.
Lone parents with children aged seven or more will be expected to seek work and drug addicts will not get cash unless they seek treatment.
David Cameron said he was "thrilled" by the proposals in the government's Green Paper - although he insisted the Tories had put them forward first. He pledged that his party would help push them even if Gordon Brown suffered a major rebellion by backbenchers.
However, campaigning groups and left-wing MPs warned that they risked punishing the most vulnerable among Britain's 4.5 million benefits claimants.
And former welfare minister Frank Field said he had "lost count . . . of the number of occasions the government has published what it thinks are radical and tough proposals and for very little to happen".
"Over the last 11 years, it is important to remember, we spent £60,000 million of taxpayers' money supporting 'New Deals' and 'Making Work Pay'," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"And the net effect of that, at a time when three million extra jobs have been created in the economy - the workless roll call has fallen by less than half a million."
Disabled charity Scope said it had "deep concerns" about the tone of the plans.
Chief executive Jon Sparkes said: "Disabled people face a myriad of barriers in finding employment, including negative attitudes from employers and inadequate social care support.
"Punitive measures against individual disabled claimants will do nothing to remove these barriers."
Fiona Weir, chief executive of charity One Parent Families, backed plans to allow lone parents to keep all child maintenance they received without giving up benefits. But she added: "We are concerned that the emphasis on compulsion and sanctions is wrong, unnecessary and unworkable."
Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell condemned the proposals as "a moral disgrace".
"At a time of increasing unemployment, such draconian measures will not only prove counter-productive, but the requirement for forced labour and the greater harassment of disabled people is a moral disgrace," he said. - (PA)