Review urged of 'costly' Government job programme for drug addicts

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Communities

A Government job programme for drug users cost nearly £12,000 for every addict who found a job, a report revealed today.

Fewer than one in 10 of the heroin and crack users who joined the Progress2Work scheme both secured paid work and managed to stay in it for at least 13 weeks.

At £13 million in total, the scheme cost £11,600 for each user found a job in 2008/9.

An adult working full time for the minimum wage would earn about £12,000 a year.

The figures were revealed in a National Audit Office report into the £1.2 billion of taxpayers' money spent every year to tackle Class A drug addiction.

It called for the Department for Work and Pensions to review Progress2Work to ensure better value for money.

The report also criticised the lack of a proper framework for measuring the success or failure of the Government's ten-year Drug Strategy.

Barely one in twenty of the 195,000 drug addicts who entered drug treatment last year came out clean.

A total of 9,300 addicts finished the £580 million programme free of drugs in 2008/9.

A separate £150 million anti-crime programme helped half of those addicts involved to reduce the amount of crime they committed.

But there was a "sharp increase" in offending by one in four criminals after they finished treatment.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said progress on tackling drug addiction had been slow and expensive.

He said: "Problem drug use costs society around £15 billion a year and in trying to tackle it, the Government spends around £1.2 billion a year on a range of initiatives.

"Progress has been made, but whether it has been worth the amount of money spent is open to question."

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: "Reduction in harm caused by problem drug use presents a complex and chronic challenge.

"This is being addressed by a series of strategies and programmes and very substantial resources: £1.2 billion a year.

"It is achieving improved results but we need to learn from experience as we go forward and measure effectiveness and value for money in order to make appropriate adjustments to programmes."

Paul Hayes, chief executive of the National Treatment Agency, said: "Anyone who now needs treatment can get it quickly, and record numbers of drug users are receiving help.

"The numbers dropping out of treatment early are falling, the numbers staying in long enough to benefit are rising, and the numbers successfully completing treatment for dependency are increasing year on year."

"We have always known that society benefits from effective drug treatment because it cuts crime, improves public health and fosters stable family relationships.

"We can now demonstrate how the treatment system has risen to the challenge of delivering greater productivity for taxpayers as well."

But Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This scheme was well intentioned but it simply hasn't worked.

"This failure has cost taxpayers dearly and has failed to help the vast majority of drug addicts whom it was targeted at.

"It should be a fundamental rule that any taxpayer-funded scheme should have proper measures of success or failure and the Government should be swift to reform or shut down any failing scheme."

Employment Minister Jim Knight said: "Drug addiction has a devastating impact on individuals, their families and wider society - doing nothing is not an option.

"We have introduced even greater expectations on drug users to take up the help on offer to get off drugs and into jobs and where they refuse to take up the help on offer of access to treatment and support, they will lose their benefits."