Six million Britons are living in households where nobody works
Last updated at 11:47am on 19th July 2007
Six million Britons are living in households where nobody works - costing the taxpayer almost £13 billion a year in benefits alone, a spending watchdog report reveals today.
An astonishing one in six households across the country are officially classified as 'workless' - having adults of working age but none with a job - and almost 1.8 million children are now growing up in these homes.
Scroll down for more...
Like the TV series Shameless, about an out-of-work family, there are six million homes in Briton where no one works
The National Audit Office report lambasts the Government for failing to tackle this hard-core group, and warns that those living in workless households risk drifting into a spiral of joblessness, poverty, ill-health and crime - with a huge cost to society.
The report acknowledges that schemes to help unemployed people find work are having some success "for those who participate", with the number of those in work at a record high, but says millions at the bottom of the heap are falling through the net.
At a time when hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants are being allowed into Britain to work, the report raises fresh questions over the combined effects of the Government's immigration and employment strategies.
The NAO report reveals that three million UK households - almost 16 per cent - are now classified as workless, and are home to 4.2 million working-age adults and 1.7 million children.
Astonishingly in 80 per cent of such households nobody is actively seeking work.
In one third of cases the household "reference person" - in whose name the home is rented or owned - has no qualifications, compared with 14 per cent of wider adult population, and 51 per cent of adults in workless households are registered with a long-term disability.
The problem is concentrated in cities including inner London - where one in four households are workless - Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and is worse among some ethnic groups. Pakistani and Bangladeshi households are the most likely to be workless at 22.3 per cent, while Indian households are the least likely, at 6.8 per cent.
Internationally Britain has one of the worst rates of worklessness. Around 13.5 per cent of the UK population live in workless households, compared with compared with 11 per cent in France, five per cent in the United States and less than 3 per cent in Japan.
The estimated £12.7 billion-a-year benefits bill for workless households does not include Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit, the report states.
Nor does it include the wider economic cost to society, which could be three times higher, the NAO suggests.
Both adults and children are more likely to live in poverty and young people are less likely to get a job or take part in education or training, leading to cycle of low-skill and unemployment.
Areas with high concentrations of workless households often face a "cycle of disadvantage" including crime, drug abuse, low achievement at school and family breakdown.
The report claims the benefits bill for such high-needs households is only around one third the total costs for support, adding: "Other service costs include health and social care, housing, drug service and the criminal justice system."
Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, said: "More has to be done to reach out to these households and to increase awareness of the support available and help people to prepare for and find work."
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "It is extremely depressing that there are literally millions of people in the UK who are out of work and not even bothering to look for a job.
"Not only are these people taking advantage of taxpayers but they are also setting an appalling example for their children, who are being brought up to believe that such behaviour is acceptable.
"Hardworking taxpayers shouldn't have to pay out billions of pounds to people who are too lazy to get off their couches to find a job.
"Many people thought that Shameless was a funny TV comedy. Unfortunately it was depiction of how millions of people live in Britain today."