Britain was last night exposed as the jobless capital of Europe, with one in eight adults living in a house where no one is in work.

As the Government prepares a clampdown on benefits scroungers, a league table revealed that a greater proportion of people in the UK are in jobless households than in any other European country.

And separate analysis has found that in the worst ghettos of worklessness, as many as 84 per cent are on welfare.

The devastating reports paint a terrifying picture of the true extent of ' Shameless Britain', in which millions grow up in a culture of dependency where work does not pay. The Government will this week lay out new plans to tackle this welfare dependency, by launching a crackdown on incapacity benefit scroungers.

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The shocking report by the right-wing think-tank Centre for Policy Studies revealed that 11.5 per cent of UK adults  -  almost one in eight  -  live in workless households.

This is the highest rate in the six largest economies in the European Union, and almost twice the level in the Netherlands.

The proportion is also higher than our closest economic competitors  -  Germany (9.2 per cent) and France (10.5 per cent). The report said a ten per cent drop in the number of workless households in the UK, down to the level of France, would increase the country's GDP national output by one per cent. The CPS report found that Britain's workless households contain 5.4million adults and 1.9million children.

The study concluded that while many more paid jobs became available between 1992 and 2007, far more of them went to households where there was already someone working - doing little to attack worklessness.

However, there was some improvement over Labour's time in office  -  in 1998, the percentage in workless households was 12.5 per cent.

The number of economically inactive working-age adults in the UK  -  more than 9million  -  is at the highest level since 1982 at the height of the first of Margaret Thatcher's two recessions.

The report calls for greater sanctions on benefits claimants for noncompliance with training and labour market programmes; reducing lowskilled immigration where possible, and ensuring that work pays.

It also calls for measures to get people back to work to be devolved to local government because councils know more about local market conditions than Whitehall.

Jill Kirby, director of the CPS, said: 'This report shows that welfare reform is urgently needed, to pull down the barriers between working families and those who are entirely dependent on benefits.

'Increasing work participation is important not just for the families involved, but also to strengthen the British economy and to aid recovery  -  a recovery in which everyone can play a part.'

Statistics showing where Britain lies in relation to its EU neighbours

Another report, by the Spectator magazine, exposes just how embedded welfare dependency is in some parts of the country.

They looked at the smallest statistical areas in the UK  -  containing around 1,000 adults in each  -  to find out where the worst ghettos of worklessness are.

The worst is in the Rochdale ward of Central and Falinge, which is appropriately pronounced ' failinge'. Here, no fewer than 84 per cent of residents are on benefits.

There are 134 areas of England and Wales where more than half the residents are claiming benefit, and five where more than two-thirds are in that position. The others in the top five are in Rhyl, Liverpool, Birmingham and Middlesbrough. Of the top 20 worst areas, half are in the North West, and just two are in the South East.

In July, the Daily Mail revealed that 'Shameless Britain' is the European capital of unemployed single mothers. A massive 48 per cent of lone parents in the UK have no job  -  the second-highest rate in the industrialised world.

The 'Shameless Britain' tag refers to the Channel 4 comedy set on a council estate in Stretford, Manchester.