London, Jun 28 (IANS): The British government is drawing up a plan to relocate unemployed people to areas in the country where there are jobs, a media report said.

The government would be bringing forward proposals to make the workforce "more mobile", Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith told the Sunday Telegraph.

Successive governments have over the years created one of the "most static work forces in the western world", Smith said.

"In Britain now, we have work forces that are locked to areas and the result of that is we have over five and a half million people of working age who simply don't do a job."

Smith said ministers wanted to encourage jobless people living in village council houses to move out to homes in other areas, perhaps hundreds of miles away.

Millions of people were "trapped in estates where there is no work" and could not move because they would lose their accommodation, he said.

The proposed scheme would allow them to go to the top of the housing list in another area rather than giving up their right to a home.

"The local council is going to tell you that you don't have a right to a house there. We have to look at how we get that portability, so that people can be more flexible, can look for work, can take the risk to do it," he said.

The coalition is, however, looking at providing incentives for workers to relocate, rather than compelling them to move.

"Sometimes they may be lucky because work comes to those areas, but you also need to have an element of flexibility. Sometimes you just need to be able to move to the work," Smith said.

Smith also said there would also be measures to tackle occupation of large council homes.

"We have tonnes of elderly people living in houses which they cannot run and we've got queues of desperate people with families who are living in one and two-bedroom houses and flats," he said.