THE Labour government is looking at a tough new crackdown to force single mums back to work after just three months as part of a programme for "full employment".

In a move that will alarm the party's Left wing and welfare groups, Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman today confirmed that she was looking at a "Work not Welfare" programme operated by the state of Wisconsin in the US.

The scheme, visited by Mrs Harman and officials earlier this year, forces single mothers back to work when their babies are three months old with the threat of total loss of benefits. It is far more draconian than Labour's existing proposals to remove special top up benefits worth very little from single parents who refuse to take jobs after extensive interviewing and counselling.

Senior Department of Social Security officials have found the Wisconsin project "very interesting".

Mrs Harman tells the BBC's Panorama programme tonight: "We are concerned to end a situation where the Government just stands by and allows a situation where one million lone mothers bring up two million children on income support.

"They have a low standard of living, there's a high cost to the taxpayer and they're excluded from the mainstream of society."

The news of the crackdown came as Chancellor Gordon Brown unveiled a new Labour commitment to full employment opportunities for all.

He promised that by next century there would be jobs for everyone who wanted them by finding more than a million jobs to halve Britain's 6.3pc jobless rate to the below 3pc widely considered to mean full employment.

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