How to improve the Work Programme

Everyone who has been involved in the Work Programme has been warning ministers for some time that there were serious problems with this flagship policy. As this is the opposite of a listening government nobody took any notice. Big homelessness charities have warned that the system doesn’t work for people on the streets, small work creation charities like the one I run have seen a trickle of referrals from the ‘prime providers’ who won the contracts. Large employers are mystified by the plethora of organisations knocking on their doors offering to partner up on getting people back to work.

And now the first official statistics show that just three per cent of people going through the Work Programme are finding sustainable employment – i.e. remaining in work for six months. The most authoritative analysis comes from Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion. This recognises that the model developed by Lord Freud for Iain Duncan Smith was designed for different economic times – in layman’s terms, the Work Programme would function a whole lot better if there were more jobs for people to go into.