Written question asked by Liam Byrne (Labour) on Thursday, 1 March 2012, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 5 March 2012. It was answered by Lord Grayling (Conservative) on Thursday, 8 March 2012 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Work Programme

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment his Department has made of the performance of the Work programme.

Answer: Participants are on the Work programme for two years. Providers can only claim a job outcome payment after a participant has been in employment and off benefit for up to 26 weeks. It will therefore take time before sufficient job outcome data are available to create a meaningful statistical series. For this reason job outcome information will not be available until autumn 2012.The Department for Work and Pensions has commissioned a consortium led by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) to undertake an independent evaluation of the Work programme. Evaluation work started in autumn 2011 and will conclude in 2014.

Secondary information