AROUND 23,000 long-term sick people across the region face a £25-a-week benefit cut, under harsh Tory plans unveiled last night.

The Conservatives pledged to remove incapacity benefit (IB) from the one-in-five claimants believed to be able to work, by testing all 2.6m existing claimants within three years.

Anyone judged ineligible to claim IB would instead be placed on job seekers’ allowance (JSA) – which pays £64.30 a week, instead of a typical £89.90.

With one-in-five expected to fail the tougher test, and 115,000 IB claimants across Merseyside and North Cheshire, the crackdown would hit about 23,000 people in the region.

The “hotspots” are Knowsley and Liverpool, where nearly one in seven people claim IB – a legacy of the industrial meltdown of the 1980s.

Last night, the Conservatives insisted the shake-up would save £600m over three years, sufficient to found the party’s new “Work Programme” to speed up help for the jobless.

Explaining the new programme, Mr Cameron said: “Labour has never really bitten the bullet of proper welfare reform.

“Instead of just pilot schemes for people on incapacity benefit, we are going to go through the 2.6m people.

“Everybody knows that some of those people cannot work and must be helped – and we are a compassionate society and we must look after those people – but some of those people can work.”

The £600m savings would fund “back-to-work” help for the young jobless after six months of unemployment, including 50,000 “work pairings” with traders, 100,000 extra apprenticeships and 50,000 additional FE college places.

The government has also vowed to move IB claimants able to work onto JSA, but its “Flexible New Deal” is only due to get under way in Halton, Warrington and Cheshire this month – and across Merseyside a year later.

Mr Cameron had promised to explain today how the £600m cost of his plans would be funded – suggesting its release was brought forward.

That move may have been to try to distract attention from the squabbles over Europe.