THE 'TERRIBLE LEGACY' OF SICK-NOTE BRITAIN

Children are growing up in families where three generations have never worked, one of the Government's most senior advisers has warned.

Dame Carol Black, the national director of health and work, said whole sections of British society had "drifted" into a benefits culture which had created "a terrible legacy" for their children.

Dame Carol has been commissioned by the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions to deliver a report on the sickness and incapacity benefit system which will be published next week. She told The Sunday Telegraph that too many people remained on sick leave for years, when quicker help could have prevented mental and physical health problems from becoming entrenched.

She said: "We have got places where there are three generations of men who have never worked. If your grandfather never worked and your father never worked, why would you think work is the normal thing to do? I think it is an awful thing to inflict on a child. I worry about what this does to the fabric of our society, let alone the economy."

The medical professor called for research to uncover the extent to which patterns of truancy were followed by adult unemployment. She also expressed concern that teenage single mothers who had never worked were more likely to bring up children who were workshy.

"There are too many people with no expectation that their lives are going to get better, no structure, no shape to their lives at all," she said. "I worry about the way these patterns will be replicated, whether it is about young, single mothers whose children don't understand the role of work, or about truant children becoming more likely to be workless when they reach adulthood." Her review, which aims to improve the health of those in work and to get more people off sickness benefits, will warn that mental health problems such as depression place an intolerable £40 billion burden on the economy, due to the costs of sick leave, lowered productivity and extra health and social care.

The report will say psychiatric disorders in those aged between five and 15 are five times as common in families where the parents have never worked, compared with those where the parents are professionals.

Dame Carol will call for GP sicknotes to be replaced by "fitness notes" telling employers which tasks people can and cannot do.

The Office of National Statistics disclosed yesterday that 400,000 people, a quarter of the jobless total, have been out of work for longer than a year. The number of long-term unemployed is the highest since 2001 and for the first time in a decade, more than 100,000 people between 18 and 24 are out of work.