THREE North-East areas - including Tony Blair's Sedgfield constituency - will be targeted in a crackdown on "can work, won't work" benefit claimants.

Long-term jobless in Sedgefield, Middlesbrough and Hartlepool will be among the first threatened with the loss of their benefits if they refuse to look for work.

In a speech yesterday, Work Secretary John Hutton condemned a small group of benefit claimants in areas with plenty of jobs who were physically able to work. He hailed the success of migrants from eastern Europe in finding work in Britain as proof there were jobs available.

At the same time, Mr Hutton's department released a list of the 30 local authority areas with the lowest employment.

In Middlesbrough, only 66.4 per cent of working-age people have jobs, with the figures for Hartlepool (67.2 per cent) and Sedgefield (67.4 per cent) little better.

Mr Hutton said: "We know there is a strong link between worklessness, benefit dependency and poverty, but these areas are also often those where the most jobs and vacancies are found. JobCentre Plus today handles about 600,000 vacancies across Britain covering a broad range of occupations.

"There tends to be more vacancies in areas with low employment rates than the national average. This is true across a range of occupations."

Mr Hutton said the key to breaking the cycle of benefit dependency was to expect long-term claimants to get involved in programmes to increase their chances of getting a job.

He said: "For those who won't do so, then there should be consequences, including less benefit or no benefit at all."

But the speech was quickly branded a "Blairite gimmick".

Philip Hammond, the Tory work spokesman, said: "This 11th-hour assault has more to do with Labour's internal feuding than with a genuine attempt to help people back to work."

David Laws, for the Liberal Democrats, said it was extraordinary that Mr Blair had waited until the end of his premiership to tackle such an important problem.