Pathways to Work programme had 'limited effect' on reducing number of benefit claimants - report

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Central Government and also in Communities, Housing

A flagship £760 million programme to reduce the number of people on incapacity benefits had "limited effect" according to a report by the Commons' spending watchdog today.

The Pathways to Work programme contracted work to private providers who "seriously underperformed" and had lower success rates than Jobcentre Plus, the Commons Public Accounts Committee found.

Between 2005 and 2009 the number of people on incapacity benefits reduced by just 125,000 and the committee said it could not be clear how many of these were due to the Pathways project.

The programme, launched nationally between 2005 and 2008, was aimed at cutting the number of claimants, which remained stubbornly high at more than 2.5 million for over a decade.

In 2008-9 the benefits bill for the 2.6 million people on incapacity benefits was £12.6 billion.

The Public Accounts Committee's Labour chairwoman Margaret Hodge said: "The Department for Work and Pensions deserves credit for attempting to tackle the intractable problem of moving people from incapacity benefits into work.

"But its key programme for doing so, Pathways to Work, was not well implemented and has had limited effect.

"For over a decade the number of incapacity benefit claimants has remained at over 2.5 million; and nearly 1.5 million have been receiving benefits for more than five years.

"But, between 2005 and 2009, the number of claimants went down by just 125,000. No one knows by how much Pathways, which has so far cost over £750 million, contributed to this reduction."

The Pathways project, which used contractors in 60% of the country with Jobcentre Plus covering the rest, provided targeted support and earlier medical assessment for people claiming incapacity benefits.

The committee's report said "the performance by the mainly private sector providers has been universally poor in relation to their main target group, those people who are required to go on the Pathways programme".

Ms Hodge said: "Pathways was introduced without rigorous evaluation of the pilots, leading to markedly unrealistic projections by the mainly private sector providers of what they could achieve.

"Private providers' performance was universally poor in helping claimants required to go on the programme - worse than Jobcentre Plus areas.

"They tended to cherry pick their clients and still achieved only one third of the targets for mandatory participants."

The coalition Government is now developing a new system to get people off benefits and into jobs.

The committee recommended that the Department for Work and Pensions should learn from its mistakes as it develops the new Work Programme.

Ms Hodge said: "As the Department 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."

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: "This report is hugely disappointing and just underlines how misplaced many of the previous Government's labour policies were. They just never got to grips with the challenges of getting people back to work."