Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has called for an end to a "benefits culture" on council estates as he unveiled proposals to give tenants who pay rent and make a positive contribution help in buying a stake in their homes.
Mr Duncan Smith said he wanted to see a major overhaul in housing policy to reward social housing tenants who make a positive contribution and look for work.
Speaking on GMTV, Mr Duncan Smith said the report aimed to change the aspirations of people living on estates.
He said social housing should be seen as part of a "back-to-work process".
"We shouldn't lock people into this for life because that takes away all incentive for people to seek work and change their lives," he said.
He said all governments over the past 30 years were to blame for a "benefits culture" in which children growing up on estates were less likely to see adults in work.
His remarks were made as his think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), set out a stark assessment of the decline of working class areas over the past half-century.
It calls for an overhaul of housing policy to put an end to the "cycle of destructive behaviour" of poverty, family breakdown and crime on council estates which have deteriorated into "ghettos".
Its proposals include new incentives to discourage social tenants getting into a downward spiral of benefits dependency. Jobless social housing tenants who try to find work could be given an equity stake in their homes under the proposals in the report.
The CSJ also calls on a future Conservative government to consider rewarding people who demonstrate a desire to get back on the path to self-sufficiency with stakes in their own homes. That could include people who pay their own rent, rather than relying on the state, and make contributions to the local community.
