FAMILY doctors will be told to hand out fewer sick notes to cut the number of people in the North-East on incapacity benefits, under new government plans.

Job advisors will sit alongside GPs as they carry out consultations to persuade them to find ways of keeping patients in work, rather than placing them on the sick.

Ministers want to break the vicious circle that means, once someone has claimed sickness benefits for one year, they do so for an average of seven years. That has led to a spiralling £12bn benefits bill, with more than 80,000 incapacity benefit (IB) claimants in the North-East alone.

The scheme is likely to be tried out in the region, because many areas have already been chosen to pilot a closely-related initiative, called Pathways to Work.

Already under way in Gateshead and South Tyneside, new IB claimants are given health advice and offered a £40-a-week back-to-work incentive in compulsory monthly interviews.

The scheme will be extended to the Tees Valley, County Durham and Sunderland from October next year.

But doctors' leaders raised fears that the specialist advisors would compromise the confidentiality of GP consultations and force patients back to work too soon. They also questioned whether cramped surgeries - already struggling to accommodate extra GPs and nurses - would have room for the advisors.

A British Medical Association spokeswoman said: "It is not the job of GPs to police the social benefits system - it is to look after patients' health."

But ministers believe both physical and mental health suffers if workers are unnecessarily placed on the sick, often leading to isolation.

Latest figures showed Easington, in County Durham, was the IB capital of England, with 20.1 per cent of the working population - 11,300 people - claiming the benefit.

Other hotspots with more than 12 per cent of would-be workers on IB were Sedgefield, Hartlepool, Wear Valley, Sunderland, Gateshead, Derwentside and Middlesbrough.

Work and Pensions Secretary David Blunkett said: "There is a big problem with the way doctors grant sick notes. Once people are put on the sick, they tend to stay sick.

"We have got to persuade GPs it is in the interest of the patient, and not just in the interests of the state or its agencies, to help them."

Mr Blunkett said many parts of Britain had "lost the work ethic that existed in working-class estates in which I grew up in northern Sheffield".

The proposal to send job advisors into GP surgeries will be discussed when Mr Blunkett unveils wider proposals on welfare reform in October.

Reform will include removing automatic benefit increases after six and 12 months.