More people need to adopt the work ethic and aim high in life, Gordon Brown will say today in a keynote speech on social mobility.

The Prime Minister will declare that he wants Britain to become upwardly mobile once again. He will also announce details of a scheme in which poor parents will receive £200 if they ensure that their children get basic medical attention.

Mr Brown, a notorious workaholic, is expected to tell an event hosted by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in London that parents must want their children to do better than they did themselves but that this “cannot be achieved without people themselves adopting the work ethic, the learning ethic and aiming high ... We must set a national priority to aggressively and relentlessly develop the potential of the British people”.

Mr Brown will talk about close friends who might have gone in to apprenticeships or to university but missed out because the opportunities were not available.

He will claim that the situation got worse for “Thatcher's children” — those who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s — when he believes that social mobility stalled, creating a “lost generation”.

He is expected to say: “The abiding reason for my interest in public service is that I want their children and their grandchildren to have all the chances that were not available to my school friends.”

Britain is to pilot a US-style scheme in which parents who take their under-fives for check-ups or vaccinations at a local children's centre will receive a cash payment. It is part of a £125 million scheme over three years, announced in the last Budget, to alleviate child poverty.

The services that trigger payment could include health screenings and routine injections. “Giving people a one-off grant can be an incentive for people in deprived areas to make better use of kids clubs, children's centres and healthcare services,” an aide to Mr Brown said.

The payments will not be means tested but the pilot schemes will be held in low-income areas. The final decision over whether to write the cheque will made by the staff at the centre that administers the treatment.

The scheme is part of Mr Brown's attempts to tackle systemic inequality in Britain. He will add: “In education, the family you are born into is still the best predictor of the exam results you achieve. In employment, millions of adults still do not have the skills they need to make progress in their working lives. In health, the place where you were born still determines how long you will live. And in housing, your parents' wealth still makes a great difference to your chances of getting on the housing ladder.”

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