But there are two other things that I'm planning which will help transform the welfare landscape. The first is to do what Labour never did. For year after year, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown simply abandoned the two and a half million people on incapacity benefit in Britain. Nobody talked to them. Nobody asked if there were better alternatives for them. Nobody challenged them to find a new way to make more of their lives. And no one double-checked to make sure they really needed those benefits. From next week all that will change. Starting on a small scale, and then from next April on a national scale, we will assess all of those claimants - except for those who are about to reach retirement age. Each one will go through an independent medical assessment to see what their condition really is. Those with the potential to work will be expected to do so. Those who could work with extra support will receive it. Those who cannot work will continue, and rightly so, to receive unconditional support. And the minority who are playing the system will lose their benefits straight away. By next spring we will be assessing 10,000 people per week. It will be one of the biggest programmes of its kind ever carried out. I am simply not prepared to let a situation continue where we leave millions of our fellow citizens to live out their lives on benefits without ever asking whether there is a better alternative. But that's just the start. It's no good just assessing people. That was the Labour way. You actually have to do something with them afterwards. And that's where the Work Programme comes in. The Work Programme will be one of the biggest employment and back to work programmes in the world. It will replace the haphazard mix of Labour schemes that cost billions and never worked. And it will create a whole new world for benefit claimants. No more sitting at home on benefits doing nothing. No more excuses about it all being too difficult. Remember that under Labour we had five million people on benefits. And more than two million people managed to come to the UK from other countries and find jobs without difficulties. No wonder we need change. So from next spring we'll start to roll out the Work Programme around the country. There'll be much better support for those on benefits to get them back into work. It will be delivered by experienced organisations in the private and voluntary sectors We'll give them the freedom to design the right programmes for claimants - not just to implement schemes designed in Whitehall. But the quid pro quo for that will be that they work on a payment by results basis. We'll only pay those organisations when they get welfare claimants back into work. And help them stay there. But this is a two way bargain. We'll help people to get back on their feet again. But if they refuse that support, then they will lose their benefits. As simple as that. So there'll be new rules setting out the conditions for receiving benefits. And clearer, simpler and tougher penalties for those who break them.

The full speech is here.