The 'terrible legacy' of the children growing up in families who haven't worked for generations

Thousands of children are growing up in families where their parents and grandparents have never worked.

A senior Government adviser warned yesterday how this was creating a "terrible legacy" of youngsters who had no expectation they would ever get a job.

Dame Carol Black said: "We have got places where there are three generations of men who have never worked.

"If your grandfather never worked and your father never worked, why would you think work is the normal thing to do?

"I think it is an awful thing to inflict on a child. I worry about what this does to the fabric of our society, let alone the economy."

Dame Carol, the National Director of Health and Work, has been charged with investigating the incapacity benefit system.

Nearly 3million Britons currently claim long-term incapacity benefit, and one in five children is growing up in a family where one or both parents rely on out-of-work benefits.

The figures heighten fears Britain is breeding a "Shameless generation", named after the Channel 4 television programme which charts the lives of the dysfunctional Gallagher family, comprising the father, Frank Gallagher and his eight children.

Despite Government claims that it has eradicated youth unemployment, figures showed that there are 1.24million "Neets" in the country - youngsters aged between 16 and 24 who are not employed, in education or on a training course.

The number of Neets has risen by 15 per cent since Labour came to power in 1997.

Dame Carol said: "There are too many people with no expectation that their lives are going to get better, no structure, no shape.

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"I worry about the way these patterns will be replicated, whether it is about young single mothers whose children don't understand the role of work, or about truant children becoming more likely to be workless when they reach adulthood."

The report, which will be published this week, is expected to find that psychiatric disorders in children aged between five and 15 are five times more common in families where the parents have never worked, compared with those where the parents have professional jobs.

Dame Carol, who is a medical professor specialising in rheumatology, believes that too many people remain on sick leave for years - when quicker intervention could have helped ward off long-term mental and physical health problems.

She said she had grown up in a family with a deeply ingrained work ethic.

"We weren't really wealthy - on our bookshelf we had the Bible and a full set of Dickens, and that was it," she told the Sunday Telegraph.

"But my father had a job at the Coop and a secure wage, and I knew how important that was.

"There was structure and there was order, and I think that is lacking now in a lot of families.

"If you don't have to get up for work in the morning, why get up?"

It was revealed last month that almost half of youngsters in some regions are growing up in households claiming out-of-work benefits.

Figures uncovered by the Conservatives showed Britain has a higher proportion of children in such households than any other European country.

Dame Carol's warning was followed by a call from Conservative leader David Cameron for an end to the Government's "disastrous failure" to tackle child poverty.

"One in 15 adults of working age is ignored by the Government," he said.

"If we can't help their parents back into work, we are in effect abandoning those children to a life of poverty.

"Many of these children will fall behind at school. Many will never work. Many will go on to bring up their own children in poverty. The consequences for them - and for our society - will last a generation."