There is nothing Left-wing about expecting everyone else to pay for people who won't to work, writes Labour Minister

The Work and Pensions Minister sends a tough message on benefits – which will enrage many in his party.

The welfare state is a vital part of the fabric of our country. It's something in which we should take pride, a way in which we come together as a nation to support those who are vulnerable and in need of help.

But our welfare system has not always kept pace with the changes in our society. Even worse, it has at times lost touch with the vision of its founding fathers more than 60 years ago.

William Beveridge – and the Attlee Government that put his vision into practice – never saw the welfare state as replacing individual responsibility or ambition.

For the few who needed permanent support, they believed, of course, it should be provided by society. But for the vast majority, they saw such help as purely temporary.

They simply would not understand a welfare system that in the Eighties wrote off millions of people.

With unemployment soaring and jobs scarce, hundreds of thousands of people were transferred to incapacity benefits without any expectation that they would work again.

Incapacity benefits were seen far too often for the individual as an early-retirement pension and for the Government as a way of massaging down unemployment figures.

The result, however, was a terrible waste of potential; families and communities scarred by poverty and dependency; and increasing disillusion with the welfare system by taxpayers footing the bill.

Eleven years ago, this Government began the long process of returning the welfare state to the ideals of its founders. Through the New Deal, we reintroduced the idea of support matched with personal responsibility.

The young unemployed were offered the guarantee of good training or a job with extra money but it was matched with a responsibility for them to take up the opportunities on offer. We made clear that a life on benefits when there was work was not an option.

The result has been that long-term youth unemployment has all but vanished.

So we extended the New Deal to other groups who for too long had been written off – lone parents, the older unemployed, disabled people.

With the help of a strong and resilient economy, which has weathered global problems better than our competitors', we now have 3.1million more people in work than in 1997.

Even taking account of the rise in unemployment last month, overall there are around one million fewer people on out-of-work benefits than in 1997, saving the country more than £5billion a year in benefits.

So we know how to support people back in to work. But too many people have been excluded from that help. In particular, while we have reversed the rise in incapacity benefit, there are still 2.6million claimants.

The overwhelming majority want to go back to work but incapacity benefit was designed in a way that trapped them on benefits. It damages people's health and distances them from work.

And the longer you are out of the labour market, the harder it is to get a job. Skills become out of date and confidence can easily slip away.

For some, too, who have never established a working pattern, the discipline of a job can seem very alien.

Building on the twin pillars of collective support and individual responsibility, we are determined to accelerate reform of our welfare system. We want to help as many of those on incapacity benefit as possible to fulfil their ambitions of getting back into work.

We will use the expertise of private and voluntary sectors to reach these hard-to-help groups and pay our providers out of the savings from the benefits bill.

The most severely disabled will get extra help and will be able to volunteer for this support but not be required to do so.

Nor will we expect those looking after young children to be available for work. But if they want to update skills while their children are at nursery, we will support and encourage them. Once their children are settled at school, they will be required to look for work.

We will make it easier for businesses to employ disabled people. Where people have disabilities that prevent them, for example, travelling by public transport, there will be more financial support. We will pay for sign-language interpreters or specialised equipment to help disabled people get in to work, or stay in work.

But for the majority on benefits, it will be clear that State support should be only temporary.

So for those on incapacity benefits, there will be improved assessments of their ability to work and the jobs that might best suit them. We will help them improve their health. We will look at their skills gaps and help them to fill them.

In return, it is only right that we expect everyone getting this help to take it up. So claimants will be required to turn up for meetings with their personal advisers and carry out an agreed plan to get better and get back in to work.

Those with drug problems will be offered places on treatment programmes but will have to attend them.

For those out of the labour market for a long time or who are playing the system, the Green Paper tomorrow will suggest people should do full-time work for their benefits, to get them back in to the work habit.

The longer people have been unemployed, the more we will expect of them. All this will be backed by tough sanctions including loss of benefits. It will be the end of the idea that people have a choice between a job and a life at the taxpayers' expense.

There may be some who think this is a radical step from a Labour Government. But there is nothing Left-wing about sentencing people to a life on benefits or expecting everyone else to pick up the bill for people who simply don't want to work.

Collective support and individual responsibility lay at the heart of the welfare state a Labour Government put in place six decades ago.

Through the reforms to be announced tomorrow, we will complete the task of returning our welfare system to these principles.