Mothers from problem families should feel "ashamed" of how they are damaging society and should stop getting pregnant, according to a senior government adviser.

Louise Casey, the Prime Minister's troubled families tsar, has said it is time for the state to intervene.

She told the Daily Telegraph: "There are plenty of people who have large families and function incredibly well, and good luck to them, it must be lovely. The issue for me, out of the families that I have met, they are not functioning, lovely families.

"One of the families I interviewed had six social care teams attached to them: nine children, [and a] tenth on the way. Something has to give here really.”



There are 120,000 so-called "problem families" in Britain, whose lives the Government hopes to turn around.



They cost the taxpayer an estimated £9bn in benefits, crime, anit-social behaviour and health care, and one fifth of them have more than five children.

Miss Casey warns that the state must start telling mothers with large families to take “responsibility” and stop getting pregnant, often with different, abusive men.

"The responsibility is as important as coming off drugs, coming off alcohol, getting a grip and getting the kids to school," she said.

“So for some of those women the job isn’t to go and find yourself another violent, awful bloke who you will bring a child into the world with, to start the cycle all over again.”

Ms Casey has been tasked with turning around the lives of the 120,000 most dysfunctional families by 2015.

In her initial report on the challenge the Government faces, compiled after interviewing a dozen families, she painted a grim picture of generational dysfunction.