The Work Programme is useless. Don’t take my word for it, this was the opinion of the Daily Telegraph back in November. Their piece observed that according to the government’s own calculation, around five per cent of long-term unemployed people (i.e. those out of work for over a year) would be able to find work if left to their own devices. The government’s flagship Work Programme managed a less than stellar rate of 2.3%.
The Work Programme, for readers fortunate enough not to have sustained engagement with the social security system, is supposed to help people who’ve been out of work for long periods back into the labour market. It replaced Labour’s ‘New Deal’ programme, which introduced an element of compulsion into Jobseekers’ Allowance (i.e. either get with the programme, take a job, or get your payments cut). The New Deal wasn’t without its problems, but its youth component – New Deal for Young People – managed to find jobs for around 42% of participants between 2001 and 2005. What the pay and prospects of the majority of those jobs were I’ll leave for others to determine.
The Close Protection UK (CPUK) ‘London Bridge incident’ casts a grim spotlight on the nature of the government’s Work Programme. A total of 80 persons were bussed in from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth, 50 of them ‘apprentices’ paid £2.80 an hour (when the minimum wage if £6.08 an hour) and 30 unemployed paid nothing at all, in order to act as stewards for the jubilee pageant. Dropped at London Bridge at 3am, they were told to ‘camp’ there on top of the concrete, change into cellophame macks and combat trousers in the open air, woken at 5.30am, and then did a 16-hour shift, with just a sandwich and bag of crisps, and no access to useable toilets for 24 hours. 