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.
