JAMES PURNELL is an unlikely scourge of single mothers – not least because he is a child of a lone parent himself. However, in the minds of the Labour left, the 38-year-old work and pensions secretary is fast becoming Labour’s answer to Peter Lilley, the Thatcherite Tory who in the 1990s clamped down on single mothers via a pastiche of Gilbert and Sulli-van’s I’ve Got a Little List.

This week Purnell will unveil long-awaited reforms of the welfare system, which are certain to provoke a revolt among his backbench colleagues. Even the Tories are likely to criticise him for being too right wing.

At the heart of the white paper will be the principle that, in future, most benefit claimants will be required to seek work, “prepare” for a return to work, or face sanctions.

Single mothers with one-year-old babies and people with disabilities are among those whose benefits will become “conditional”.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Purnell made it clear that his plans will be more radical than even his critics were expecting. “Virtually everyone will be doing something in return for their benefits,” he said.

Purnell, a former aide to Tony Blair, warned that those on job-seeker’s allowance would face more pressure to find work, with a system of fines for those who try to play the system.

Only a tiny minority – the seriously disabled and mothers with babies under one – would continue to collect benefits with no conditions attached.

The politically contentious element of the reforms revolves around a large third group, made up of more than 2m who claim incapacity benefit and hundreds of thousands of nonworking mothers.

Purnell said the message to them would be: “We don’t think it is appropriate to make you take work at this stage, but you should be preparing for work.”

Critics are worried about his obsession with “conditionality”. They argue that this sort of carrot and stick approach may work in boom times, but in the new era of growing unemployment it is fundamentally unfair. They also fear that too much power will be given to unaccountable job centre “advisers”.

The biggest gripe of the single parent lobby is that claimants could be forced to “prepare for work” before children are eligible for free childcare. Parents only have a right to nursery places once their children reach three. However, Purnell is insistent that lone parents must be put on a pathway back to work.

“I believe very strongly in a system like the Dutch or the Danish or the Swedish, where you have more support but also higher expectations. They have maternity and paternity leave and then people are treated in exactly the same way.”

He insisted any compulsory training courses or work experience would be matched by sup-portive “personalised” advice from job centre staff. “It’s not about stigmatising anybody,” he said.

Nevertheless, while refusing to go into detail, he made it clear that financial penalties could be used against those who refuse to engage in “work-related activities”.

The idea that mothers of younger children should face more stringent conditions was first floated last week in an independent report by Paul Gregg, an economics professor.

There has been speculation that Purnell, under pressure from party critics, would back away from new restrictions on lone parents. However, he was uncompromising: “I wouldn’t out rule going down to one [year of age] – as long as there was appropriate support for people.

“The conditionality would be very different for a one-year-old compared to a six-year-old. We need to work out how it works.”

Purnell, who is one of the few ultra-Blairites in Brown’s cabinet, insisted his reforms were consistent with Labour’s core principles: “It is about the right to work. It is in the name of the party. It is the Labour party.”

The cabinet minister grew up in France with his mother Janet, a teacher, before attending the fee-paying Royal Grammar school in Guildford, Surrey and Balliol college, Oxford. However, he insisted his own family upbringing had not affected his policy choices.

“I don’t like the private stuff terribly much,” he said. “I am the son of a lone parent. I say that on a factual basis rather than making a political point out of it.”

Purnell admitted he briefly claimed the dole after graduating from university.

“I went to claim in the early 1990s,” he said. “I ended up getting a job straight away so I can’t remember if I ever got a cheque. I just remember the job centre was incredible dingy, a humiliating experience for people. It was a difficult time for people looking for work.”

The minister is also concerned about the soaring cost of housing benefit, and the resentment felt by struggling workers who see the jobless enjoying better accommodation courtesy of the taxpayer.

“Housing is famously one bit of the welfare state that Bev-eridge himself did not fix,” he said. “People on housing benefit should not be getting levels of support that would be out of reach of their working peers.”

While Purnell is happy to borrow ideas from the hard-boiled US systems, such as “workfare” or bringing in the private sector, he ruled out American-style time limits on benefits.

“The British people would think that was unfair, if you had very bad luck over five years and at the end of it there was an arbitrary limit to your support,” he said.

Areas of depression

Parts of Britain have become so dependent on state handouts that more than a third of adults of working age there claim they are too sick to work.

A league table of Britain’s “sickest” areas, based on official figures, reveals areas where more than 40% of people are claiming incapacity benefits. Most have been dependent on handouts for more than five years.

The highest number of claimants in Britain is in the Central and Falinge area of Rochdale, near Manchester, where 490 of 1,141 working-age adults say they cannot work, mostly due to mental health conditions or injuries.

Chris Grayling, shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “What we have in these areas is a culture of long-term, generational benefit dependency, of families that encourage their children to sign on for incapacity benefit.”

Central and Falinge used to be typical of the northwest’s industrial heartlands, but its factories have been replaced by council estates and bypasses.

Martin Harlow, who lives in the area, receives £84.50 a week because he is a recovering alcoholic. He said: “I want to get back to work but there aren’t many jobs out there.”

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