Labour’s big ‘back to work’ threat to strip unwilling teens of their benefits if they don’t try to get a job or train is just a continuation of the current system, a senior minister admitted today.

Alison McGovern was grilled over the drive to ‘get Britain working again’ and achieve an ‘ambitious’ target of getting another 2 million people into jobs.

As well as targeting the long-term sick, ministers have also vowed that those aged 18 to 21 who are out of work but refuse to look for a job, seek training or an apprenticeship, will get no taxpayer cash.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme what would happen in practice, Ms McGovern, the Employment Minister, said: ‘People can have benefit taken away from them … it happens now and the existing process is that the decision is made by the person referring on to the job centre and there is an appeal process as part of it.’

She added: ‘When good help is offered, it is taken up, that is normally what happens. Of course, people will always think of that small minority, people who are not interested, they don’t want to do it.’

‘There are rules in the system. Those rules have got to be made to work to make sure that if you take out in the form of social security, you have to do your part of the bargain.’

However she added that ‘we know that young people have a responsibility to take up support’, adding: ‘The government under the Tories completely failed in its responsibility to actually help young people, the pandemic generation were failed.’

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will announce plans today as part of wide-ranging reforms designed to tackle economic inactivity and deliver the Government’s promise to bring more than two million people back into work.

While unemployment stands at almost 1.5 million, economic inactivity has also soared to more than nine million, with 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness – a major driver of the rise in joblessness since the pandemic.

During the election, Labour promised to increase the employment rate to 80 per cent from its current level of around 75 per cent, which would mean around two million more people in work.

But Labour was last night accused of putting off urgently needed reforms to cure sicknote Britain.

The white paper published today is solely focused on employment support, including a revamp of Jobcentres as well as extra NHS appointments in unemployment hotspots.

A shake-up of the benefits system and a crackdown on welfare spending will not take place for many more months with proposals not even published until next year.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it will ‘bring forward measures to overhaul the health and disability benefits system’ to ‘tackle the spiralling benefits bill’ and a ‘consultation will be published in spring’.

In addition, bosses will be asked to do more to recruit people with disabilities and health conditions – but only after a review that will run until next summer.

It comes despite ministers admitting the scale of the problem, with the Department for Working and Pensions (DWP) citing ‘stark figures’ that show almost 1.5million people across the UK are unemployed, 9m are classed as ‘economically inactive’ and a record 2.8m are out of work as a result of long-term sickness.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately said: ‘This latest announcement shows that Labour are not prepared to take the tough but necessary choices to bring down the benefits bill.