David Cameron has set out plans for a "very radical" reform of the welfare system to ease the mounting unemployment crisis and pledged to make the Conservatives "the party of jobs and opportunities".
The Tory leader said the package - which would cost £600 million and replace Labour's New Deal programme - would be the focus of his party's annual conference in Manchester this week.
Mr Cameron said he would publish an explanation of the "tough and difficult" choices required, alongside details of the Get Britain Working package.
Among promises were faster help for the young jobless and more efforts to get people off incapacity benefit, with a "much more aggressive" use of the private and voluntary sector.
Rules would be changed to allow payment by results with anticipated savings from welfare bills available up front to get people jobs in the first place.
"What we are doing is making the centrepiece of our conference a really massive Get Britain Working programme," he said.
"Labour are now the party of unemployment; I want the new Conservative Party to be the party of jobs and opportunity and at the heart of it is a big, bold and radical scheme to get millions of people back to work.
"It is the big centrepiece of our conference because we recognise that the jobs crisis is one of the most serious things we face as a country.
"If we don't deal with it, it is not just bad for those people who are unemployed now, there is a danger that short-term unemployment becomes long-term unemployment and builds up massive problems for our families and for our country in the future."
