Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell wants long-term job-seekers to work for their state benefits.

If they have been jobless for a year, they will have to do four weeks of community work with a government-backed private or public body. After two years, they will have to take a full-time job.

People who abuse the system could also be made to work in return for benefits.

Purnell says the welfare system needs a radical overhaul to force people to take more responsibility for themselves.

“One of the reasons Labour lost the trust of the country and the chance of power for 18 years was that we convinced ourselves that you help the poor only by handing out more and more in benefits,” he wrote in the Guardian. “We left individual responsibility - so important to the founders of the welfare state - out of the equation.”

The minister also wants to get one million people off incapacity benefit by 2015.

The Conservatives have welcomed the proposed reforms, but say Labour has stolen some of its key ideas. Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Chris Grayling said the government has wasted billions of pounds by failing to reform the welfare system sooner.

Do you support the government’s welfare reforms? Should jobseekers be made to work for their benefits?