Eddie Barnes: The government’s programme for the long-term unemployed needs time to bed in, but will it get it?

YESTERDAY was foot-shooting day at the Department for Work and Pensions. Ministers decided to release figures showing how many long-term unemployed people on its flagship Work Programme have now been in work for more than six months.

The data included everyone who has entered the programme since then, including those who haven’t even been on it yet for that length of time. Not surprisingly, the figure was therefore meagre – across the UK the figure was a little more than 3 per cent. For critics of the government’s welfare to work reforms, it provided an open goal. Here was another case of government reforms going wrong, badly.

The Work Programme has gone largely under the radar since being set up in June last year. But in Scotland alone, nearly 90,000 people are now on it, including many young people seeking a foot on the working ladder (19,000 18-24-year-olds in Scotland are now past 12 months on Jobseekers Allowance, up from 9,000 this time last year).

Data have piled upon data about the impact that long-term unemployment can have on people, as the cycle of depression, poor health and slumping self-confidence pushes them ever further from the workplace.

The Work Programme is a leap into the unknown. It has spurned previous back-to-work schemes, with ministers claiming they simply pushed people into makey-uppy jobs which didn’t last. Instead, the firms and charities running the programme have been set a far harder task – they only get paid properly when they manage to support people into permanent work. It is a mammoth task.

UK ministers yesterday pled for patience, insisting it was still too early to judge – with some in the sector suggesting they had deliberately published yesterday’s figures in order to set the bar low. The evidence suggests their request for patience may be right. For example, in Scotland it is understood that, of the group who joined the programme in June last year, a third have now started work. Yesterday’s 3 per cent figure is therefore likely to rise.

Quite how far, however, will be partly decided by the economy – for, without enough jobs available, the supply of work will be constrained, making it even tougher for the programme to succeed. This in turn could cause cash problems for the providers as they struggle to get the rewards for placing people in sustainable work. Some of the bigger groups remained optimistic yesterday, saying they had always known cash would be squeezed to start with. However, groups such as the Social Market Foundation say that smaller groups, which include charities and social enterprises, are “not equipped to carry the cost of providing services for which they subsequently don’t get paid.” The Work Programme may need time to bed in. The question is whether a laggardly economy will give it the chance to do so.