DISABLED workers faced a bleak future last night after the Government announced it is axing four Remploy factories in the region – at a cost of 135 jobs.

The workshops in Spennymoor, County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle and Ashington, Northumberland, are among 36 across the country that will close, most of them by the year’s end.

Kenneth Stubbs, the Remploy North-East branch secretary of the GMB union, is a worker at the Spennymoor site, which employs 41 people.

He said: “This is the third time we have heard this since 2006. We will face it in the same way we have before – by fighting it. We do not expect to change their attitude, but this Government has made more U-turns than anyone in history so there is no reason we cannot make them do the same again.”

Workers from Spennymoor plan to join a TUC demonstration outside The Sage Gateshead, which will host the Liberal Democrat spring conference this weekend, and take part in a march on Newcastle Quayside.

Maria Miller, minister for disabled people, has pledged the £320m budget would be protected and spent more effectively to get thousands more disabled people in work.

And she pointed out the move had been recommended by a review – led by the chief executive of Disability Rights UK – which said expensive, segregated employment should be phased out.

The factories lose £63m a year and the average taxpayer subsidy is £25,000 for each worker – compared with only £2,900 to support a disabled person in a mainstream job.

But Labour attacked the “callous act” and pointed to an explicit pre-election Tory commitment to protect Remploy jobs.

There was also anger about the announcement, which was slipped out, in a written statement entitled Employment Support, as MPs began tributes for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Remploy was severely shrunk by the last Labour government, which closed 28 factories, including those in Stockton, Hartlepool and York. About 350 workers lost their jobs at the three centres.

The new closures will cost 135 jobs at Spennymoor (41), Newcastle (55), Gateshead (11) and Ashington (28) – but Sunderland’s factory (35 workers) survives, because it has “a viable future without Government subsidy”.

The Department of Work and Pensions said 524 jobs had been found for disabled people in Sunderland and Newcastle last year, but did not provide a figure for County Durham.