From 2012: Private Eye on the Work Programme’s Future Failure – Beastrabban\’s Weblog

Last Updated: January 20, 2015By

workprogramme1

In its issue for the 10th -23rd February 2012, Private Eye discussed a government report predicting that the work programme would fail, and put forward ways in which it could be bailed out, writes the Beast.

The article ran:

Welfare reform
Nice Work

The National Audit Office (NAO) report on the coalition’s £5bn Work Programme (under which private contractors are paid to get people off benefits and into work) predicts that the scheme will fail. But it also suggests how the firms who run it might be bailed out.

The programme, the brainchild of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, is meant to avoid the “limited success” and “disappointing … performance” of past initiative thanks to payment-by-results. Contractors fund the scheme up front (hence the dominance of well-capitalised private firms in the programme) and are only pa9id when their clients find and keep a job.

The NAO thinks there is a significant risk, however, that Duncan Smith’s target of 40 percent of the mainstream unemployed finding work under the scheme is “over optimistic”. History, it says, suggests 26 percent is a more realistic figure. Payment-by-results targets that are too optimistic mean that: “It is possible that one or more providers will get into serious financial difficulty during the term of the contract.”

There’s much more – and you should visit Beastrabban\’s Weblog to see it, but here’s the point:

The NAO predicted all along that the scheme would fail, and the government would have to bail it out for it to stand a chance of working.

History, it seems, has proved this prediction correct.

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5 Comments

  1. Chris January 21, 2015 at 10:23 am - Reply

    … “under which private contractors are paid to get people off benefits and into work” …

    97 per cent of benefit is paid to people IN work, with only 3 per cent on unemployed.

    So … “Duncan Smith’s target of 40 percent of the mainstream unemployed finding work under the scheme” …

    Would mean benefit would RISE NOT FALL.

    The cost of benefit admin for those in or out of work raised because the retirement age rose over recent years til in 2013 women no longer gained state penson at 60 nor men at 65.

    And pensioners from 2016 will be on benefit for the rest of their lives from
    NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE or from those already getting flat rate state pension forecasts for retirement age on and from 6 April 2016 of
    only £55 per week when the current £113.10 per week is called far, far below the breadline and the lowest state pension of all rich nations bar poor Mexico.

    See why under my petition’s Why This is important section:
    https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now

  2. ispy January 21, 2015 at 11:22 am - Reply

    The Work Programme was no better at getting more people back to work than would have done by themselves if the Work Programme did not exist in the first place.

    You would thing that fact was bad enough. But no, the Work Programme has amazingly managed to sanction 50% more people than those who got a job through it!

    Amazing!

  3. Tony Dean January 21, 2015 at 12:30 pm - Reply

    On the subject of sanctions this research was released this morning at the same time it was presented in evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee:-

    http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/sanction120115-2.pdf

    • Mike Sivier January 21, 2015 at 1:49 pm - Reply

      This would be the research mentioned in my article on the sanctions stitch-up, I take it.

      • Tony Dean January 21, 2015 at 2:34 pm - Reply

        It is the full research paper mentioned in the Guardian article.
        I prefer to read sources before they get “filtered” by the media or politicians.

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