No evidence to support daily trips to the Jobcentre

The Jobcentre has a tactic I've looked at before whereby a claimant is required to go in every day to have their job seeking activities checked over. The official line is that it is to support claimants into work. Others suggest it's intended to make claiming so difficult and unpleasant that a claimant will sign off. Or that it sets people up for a sanction.

So I asked DWP what evidence they had that such a regime made it more likely that claimants receiving this particular support will get and sustain employment . After the usual delay, referral to the Information Commissioner and an inadequate response it turns out that "no evaluation of the Daily Work Search Review has been carried out as yet".

The only alternative evidence they offer is about  "Supervised Jobsearch Pilots" but they won't publish the results of these citing Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act. That scheme which involve claimants spending 35 hours a week being supervised at a "provider" is too different to  stand much chance of providing useful evidence about the benefit of having to pop into the Jobcentre every day.

So this "daily trips to the Jobcentre" regime is not backed up by any evidence before it was introduced or since it was started in April 2014.

It may therefore be unreasonable (in the legal sense of the word) for Jobcentres to impose this regime on claimants. Failing or refusing to comply with it may not legally attract sanctions

I'm asking people with more knowledge of Welfare law for their opinion - do not act on this yet!

Yet again, DWP have no idea if workfare costs jobs

(Original 15/09/15)

The Jobcentre has several schemes whereby claimants are obliged to "work for their benefits". Typically these schemes require 30 hours work for a weekly benefit payment of  £73.10 (less if you're under 25). This is just under £2.44/hour. It's alleged that this tempts employers to get work done under this scheme rather than pay an ordinary worker the National Minimum Wage of £6.70/hour.

So does "workfare" cost jobs in this way? The DWP doesn't know - I've asked them 3 times for information on how they check this isn't happening and they still say they don't know

Words literally fail me.

Update 31/03/16: They still don't know, see here however, new referrals to the schemes end today.

Derbyshire Mandatory Youth Activity Programme: What the DWP didn't learn

This local scheme involved 8 weeks of  24 (some sources imply 30) hours/week unpaid work by claimants  plus some supported jobsearch. It was mandatory and very like some of the other DWP "Workfare" schemes.

On the face of it however, there was a crucial difference. According to the guidance

4. DMYAP is aimed to test whether a period of activity at the 26 week claim
point, will have a positive impact on sustainable job outcomes

Now, if we for a moment forget that this was a nasty untested mandatory scheme, there's actually something very exciting here - an intention to see if the scheme works!

So I asked for the results. After a tussle, the DWP sent me their evaluation reports. The main one is here and disappointingly reports "It has not been possible at this time to look at the employment impacts of DMYAP.". That's unfortunate especially since finding out about "sustainable job outcomes" was the avowed purpose. I look forward to a further report that covers this vital point!

The report is not without interest as a look at what they investigated hints at what the real priorities of the DWP were:

• It showed a modest drop in claims. This is unsurprising - you do something unpleasant to claimants  and they go away.
• There is a lot of data on how much money the scheme saved.
• It claims to have improved the performance of  staff by giving them more time to work with those that were not randomly selected to go on DMYAP.

I'll keep prompting the DWP on the job outcomes issue.

Excellent truth-seeking by Welfare Weekly

The headline is "Exclusive: DWP Admits Using Fake Claimant’s Comments In Benefit Sanctions Leaflet" and the full story shows how they used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth the evidence.

Sanctions help jobseekers into work of some sort

This may be the final post in this series that started here. You will recall that Esther McVey said there was evidence that the imposition of benefit sanctions helps claimants into work. Along the way we've seen mainly old, non-UK data used to support this. I asked the DWP if they had anything based on UK and/or recent data.

While waiting for that, I dug up a paper based on recent UK data that says that "sanctions are an ineffective tool for improving labour market performance." Along the way also I discovered another paper that says that "Benefit sanctions not only reduce unemployment durations but also reduce post-unemployment employment duration and earnings."

Today I got the response from DWP. No, they haven't  got anything based on more recent UK data. So I've thanked them and sent them details of what I found.

DWP -STILL- have no idea if Workfare costs jobs or not

It's often alleged by Boycott Workfare and others that Workfare costs jobs. Why would employers recruit paid workers when they can get slaves from the Jobcentre for nothing? The DWP, aware of this allegation counter it by having "strict" guidelines that paid jobs must not be displaced. Nearly a year ago I took to wondering if they did any research, auditing, etc. to make sure the guidelines were kept to. The answer was they didn't.

Recently I asked essentially the same question again in hopes that the DWP would have now done some work on it. After a tussle it emerged that they still have no idea if Workfare costs jobs or not

``Although there are strict guidelines in place that providers must follow when sourcing appropriate placements I can confirm that we do not hold the information you requested for MWA and CWP placements``

This is very disappointing. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the Irish equivalent of the DWP have commissioned some proper research and even chucked some "employers" off their scheme for displacing jobs.

The other disappointing aspect of this response is the determination of the DWP to coyly avoid admitting that they'd put no effort into this important matter. Their initial response gives lots of information about guidelines, the benevolent intent of schemes, how they are delivered, the contracted providers and meetings. What it does not do is provide the recorded information I requested on "all research intended to measure compliance".

I solved this by asking them to do a Review of their response and quoted the very useful Section 1(1) of the FOI Act that says they have to either provide the information or say that they don't hold it.

You may find this useful  if you want to be sure that a Government does not know something you think it should. For more on this technique, see here