By Lucy Phillips
13 September 2010
A major government programme to move people off Incapacity
Benefit and into work has come under scathing criticism from Parliament’s
spending watchdog.
In a report
published today, the PublicAccounts Committee says that Pathways to Work was poorly implemented and has
had little effect. The programme, launched four years ago, has cost more than
£760m but by 2009 the number of claimants had fallen by just 125,000. The
number of people claiming Incapacity Benefit has remained at more than 2.5 million for
over a decade.
Pathways to Work aims to provide targeted support and
earlier medical assessments. It has mainly been provided by private
contractors, who are said to have performed worse than Jobcentre Plus. ‘Private
providers’ performance was universally poor in helping claimants to go on the
programme. They tended to cherry-pick their clients and still achieved only one-third of the targets for mandatory participants,’ says the report.
The findings will be met with concern by the coalition
government, which is seeking to considerably reduce the £12.6bn Incapacity Benefits
bill in next month’s Spending Review. Much of this will be done through using
private providers and a payment by results system.
PAC chair Margaret Hodge warned: ‘We found a number of
mistakes in the programme which must not be repeated in future.
‘As the Department [for Work and Pensions] develops its new
work programme, it must ensure value for money by making good use of Jobcentre
Plus and maintaining a sustainable balance between public, private and
voluntary providers in its efforts to reduce the number of Incapacity Benefit
claimants.’
The report, Support to
Incapacity Benefits claimants through Pathways to Work, also notes that the
programme was introduced ‘without effective piloting and rigorous evaluation of
its likely impact’. An early
evaluation, suggesting 25% of participants would find work, was flawed, giving
an unrealistic impression of what the programme would achieve.
Employment minister Chris Grayling said the PAC report
showed ‘how misplaced’ the previous Labour government’s policies were. ‘They
just never got to grips with the challenges of getting people back to work,’ he
added.
