Labour have announced radical plans to reform the welfare system based on a simple deal: more support in return for greater responsibility.

While David Cameron blames poor people for their own circumstances and the Tories wrote off entire generations, Labour believes that each of us has something to contribute and are offering people more support - but with a responsibility to take up that help.

The new proposals will scrap incapacity benefits by 2013 and abolish Income Support to create a more streamlined system based on just two working-age benefits - the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), for those who have a medical condition which prevents them from working, and Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) for everyone who is able to work.

James Purnell, Labour’s Secretary of State for Work said -

"This green paper proposes a simpler benefit system that rewards responsibility, gives people the incentive to do the right thing and ends the injustice of people being written off on benefits for life without any hope of getting the support they need to get back to work.

"We will help people find work, but they will be expected to take a job."

Key proposals in the reforms include –

• More support for disabled people with more benefits money; more funding to help with back to work adaptations; and proposed new civil rights.

• Helping 1 million people off incapacity benefits through personalised help with their health condition and support to get back to work.

• This will be funded by a new funding mechanism that uses money would have been spent on out of work benefits in the future to give people the support they need today.

• Major simplification of benefits, abolishing Incapacity Benefit and Income Support.

• Support for parental responsibility, lifting 200,000 more children out of poverty.

• Testing out ‘Work for Dole’ for the longest unemployed and those who ‘play the system’

• New system for drug addicts, helping addicts to get treatment in return for benefits.

In the face of Tory opposition, Labour began the long journey of welfare reform with the New Deal a decade ago. Our reforms combined extra help with extra responsibility on the individual to take it up.

As a result, we halved the number of people unemployed, and there are more people in work than ever before. We believe there is no right to a life on benefits; that paid work is the best route out of poverty, and that each of us has a role to play in contributing to the society we live in.