work

But yesterday Clr Peter McBride defended the decision to recruit a worklessness co-ordinator.

But Coun Tilsley, who chairs Be Birmingham, said money was "going where it is most needed to tackle worklessness".

By the end of September, 18 months into the WNF project, Be Birmingham had spent pounds 30 million, but only pounds 2.5 million of that went directly on projects to combat worklessness in a city where just over 50,000 people are claiming the jobseekers allowance.

Clr Woodhead believes, with finances likely to be squeezed, Kirklees needs to concentrate on frontline services, rather than recruit a new worklessness co-ordinator.

Employment Minister Margaret Hodge admitted there were concerns and said: "We must do more to tackle worklessness."

Director of research John Adams said: "It's well-known that the North is the poorest of all the UK's regions and has some of the highest levels of worklessness.

In the South Wales Valleys in particular there are high levels of worklessness, and the figures show things got worse, rather than better, during 2009.

It states: "Despite record levels of employment, some families face numerous barriers to work and experience long-term worklessness.

Not only does worklessness reduce family income, it can lead to parental conflict and poor mental health, and many workless families are held back by disadvantages such as problem debt, drug and alcohol dependency, and homelessness.

In particular, there will be a spotlight on four themes - the continued challenges of tackling worklessness throughout Wales; identifying, sharing and scaling up best-practice approaches; delivery of the Work and Health Programme in Wales; and employment support in Wales in the aftermath of Brexit.

It is clear that too many are drifting out of the education system - some into low-paid work, some into worklessness. Too many become what is known as Neets - people not in education, employment or training.

Jody Mason, Writing Unemployment: Worklessness, Mobility, and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literatures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2013)

Mr MacDonald said: "In seeking neighbourhoods to test out the ideas, we selected areas with very high levels of worklessness - perhaps like the makers of Benefits Street.

The Work and Pensions Secretary will boast that he has transformed a "dysfunctional welfare system that often caused cycles of worklessness and dependency".

Mr Duncan Smith said that the strategy focuses on the "underlying causes" of poverty, such as worklessness, and his Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) highlighted the reduction to 274,000 in the number of children living in workless households - the lowest on record.