Prime Minister Tony Blair said that his plans to shake up incapacity benefit would be based on the principle of "fairness" - helping those who could work into jobs and ensuring that cash went only to those who deserve it.

Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton was today publishing a Welfare Reform Green Paper setting out a "carrot-and-stick" package to cut the 2.7 million claimants currently on incapacity benefits.

The paper was expected to include not only measures to support the one million claimants understood to want to return to work, but also a measure of "compulsion" to make it less easy to remain on the benefit.

Mr Blair said: "There are still far too many barriers that prevent people who could work from doing so.