In my case I doubt the Work Programme will be successful. I’m 49 years old, fairly recently diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and am still looking for my first job. I have already been told that I won’t be receiving any of the specialist, intensive and expensive help that I need to enter the workforce.

I’d really like to know who paid the SMF for this report. I wonder if it was any of the many large private contractors which stand to profit if the terms of the contracts are revised in their favour.

The contractors who won the bulk of the contracts are hardly babes in the woods and I think we can assume that they knew what they were signing up to. They would have looked carefully at what was possible and would not have taken them on without a reliable expectation of turning a profit. If the current contracts are not likely to turn them a profit then it’s because they entered loss-leading low bids on the expectation that they could then put pressure on DWP to sweeten the deal later – a possibility that insiders have been whispering about for months.

I have been on several new deal schemes and completed the twelve month flexible new deal and still find myself unemployed. I have started the work programme and due to attend my fifth appointment later this week. It is so far exactly like flexible new deal, just turning up for around an hour once every week or so. The providers used to massage the figures on new deal when they had to achieve 40% targets so that was never going to be achieved. I have completed a few work placements and when my time was up the provider put another claimant in my place so no jobs were actually available.
The only realistic way to reach near or full employment will be for all members of the European community to change the rules and allow countries to ban any foreign workers from basic jobs that can be done by their own people with minimum training until that nation reaches near or full employment. Basic jobs such as porters, admin clerks and warehouse staff should not go to overseas people while we have mass unemployment.

“I have completed a few work placements and when my time was up the provider put another claimant in my place so no jobs were actually available.”

That says it all.

Only a party so out of touch with reality as the modern Tory party could think it would work, or one so breathtakingly cynical that it doesn’t give a damn whether it works or not so long as figures are massaged and cash flows to companies that employ deadbeat ex-ministers. It is sheer stupidity to shovel even more cash at companies who’ve already demonstrated a lower success rate than Job Centres and in the case of Deloitte, a company with no experience at all in the field beyond a purely coincidental £28000 donation to Monty Burns lookalike Chris Grayling. This programme is MORE expensive than Labour’s failure because the big firms like the money but not the scrutiny and so have padded their contracts to subcontract the actual work to charities, who have since said the money on offer is too low. Why the charities couldn’t have been directly contracted without the big firms is a mystery to all except politicians. As is the need for the programme in this form, the money could have been given directly to Job Centres who could then have spent it on whatever training or help each unemployed individual needs. Instead we have workfare providing free labour to the richest companies such as Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Poundland, Hilton Hotels etc and even greater elements of punishment have been added which will only drive the unemployed to despair or crime.

IDS (or IBS as I’ve come to think of him after the incident with the toilet for the disabled) isn’t a great reformer, he’s the same pompous arrogant buffoon who was regarded with utter contempt by his own party when he led it.

@3 Rob

The only realistic way to reach near or full employment will be for all members of the European community to change the rules and allow countries to ban any foreign workers from basic jobs that can be done by their own people with minimum training until that nation reaches near or full employment. Basic jobs such as porters, admin clerks and warehouse staff should not go to overseas people while we have mass unemployment.

Impossible and not desirable.That would mean many UK citizens would be forced to stay in this country as there would be similar measures introduced elsewhere. Smells a little like a BNP/EDL policy.

Productivity is high amongst overseas workers and they help to support the benefit system. The old Green party idea of keeping all benefits in addition to any part time work is good, though politically unpopular. The overseas workers help to support UK people on benefit, many of whom are too ill, depressed etc to work. Indeed this assault on people on benefits needs to stop.

Hi Pete Lee

It seems that whenever someone mentions anything relating to putting British nationals first someone wants to label them with the bnp. I have no problem with foreign workers but with something like two thirds of new jobs going to people from overseas that really is not acceptable. I’m not saying that anyone should lose their job because they are from overseas, I’m saying that from now all basic new jobs should be given to our million plus unemployed until times are better. It wouldn’t take much training to teach someone to be a porter or an admin clerk, most people especially the young are on computers most days so they already are computer literate to a standard. I don’t go along with the belief that the unemployed are lazy in general and given the opportunity they would motivate themselves and become good workers. When I left school in the early 70′s it was a twenty minute interview with the manager and he decided on that to either give you a chance or not. These days many jobs are done by people with good qualifications when in reality if you can tie up your own shoelaces you are more than capable of doing that job. The unskilled are not being given a chance to do the basic jobs to earn a salary and at least have a bit extra in their pockets at the end of the week.
If we gave most of the new jobs created to British nationals for a fixed period at least then no one could blame foreign workers for taking their jobs. Of course if a British national was stopped for taking a vacancy abroad then it’s a price worth paying. If the British are lazy why would any other country even consider employing a British worker? Every nation has its share of good and bad workers and I’m only concerned about the future vacancies and if a foreign worker has a job in Britain then good luck to them and I hope they reap the rewards. My original comment was only about trying to help our unemployed.

I think people are losing sight of the issue here. Whether or not we like it, the days of ‘full’ employment (in so far as it existed) have gone forever. People need to ask how we got here. Well here goes:

During the Eighties we saw a huge shift in employment. From strong unions, heavy industry, male dominated industry and the like to service, poorly paid, low skilled type jobs. Not only that but we also saw a shift in employment laws and practices. Lots of people have been left behind that shift and to pretend otherwise is just being pigheaded in the face of overwhelming facts.

Employers do not need large numbers of the unemployed! Nor do they want them. The reason why people with seemingly mild ailments were put onto incapacity is not some kind of ‘socialist plot’ as many would have you believe, it was a deliberate attempt to shield us from the harsh brutal reality that great swathes of people were unemployable when you have a surplus of labour! The Tories did this for purely pragmatic reasons; employers where demanding the right to hire and fire at will from a surplus of labour pool of people.

Who would employ someone with a serious lung condition when there are two hundred similarly qualified, but healthier people looking to take on that job? Sure, if that person has got a unique selling point, like experience or a talent, but, by and large, why bother employing a person with serious difficulties when you can have two hundred CVs plopping through your door the morning after you put an advert in the paper?

Now, since the Tories have got back into power, none of that has changed. Thirteen years of Labour largely left employment laws untouched; if anything the labour market has become seriously more saturated, more fragmented and of course opened to the best of Eastern Europe has to offer.

There are people in this Country who are unemployable and will remain so, no matter what IDS or the other Nasty scum in the Tory Party do. Do you know what? It is the same everywhere in the World. People with least skills, poorest prospects or simply unhealthy fall out of the labour market, irrespective of whether or not there is a welfare State to support them.

We all know this and even the Tories know this, because they largely created these conditions, but they are loathed to really fix it, because they care not a damn for these people.

I remember the eighties when the mines and heavy industry where grinding to a halt. There were lines of middle aged men all learning to type, set up spreadsheets and formatting wordstar documents (remember wordstar anyone?).

These people were not learning new skills, they were a testament to the Tories ‘DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY’ agenda. These things were stopped not because everyone got jobs because this was a huge waste of fucking money!!!!

However, these courses are still in abject failure but not a huge waste of money because the money is going directly into the pockets of the greedy, selfish bastards who fund the Tory Party.

The Great British people would rather pay 10 times as much in taxpayer money to companies that will humiliate the unemployed rather than pay 10 times less for them to have a shred of dignity on the dole. There is a lot of sadism in the British people towards those they consider beneath them.

The majority of our fellow countrymen are ignorant, mean, petty, spiteful, and sadistic.

Not to mention the main problem that it’s providing free labour to private companies in such a way it’s displacing paid jobs.

The so-called “Work Programme” is a joke. I was placed on this programme 3 months ago and so far have only met with my “Work Coach” once, and nothing happened other than we had a nice chat about growing your own vegetables! She kept me for an hour, then when I asked if I may now leave she replied “oh yes, I’m just filling in time, I haven’t got any more appointments today”. The provider (in my case a private company named B.E.S.T.) have no job opportunities to offer and no training whatsoever. It is a complete and utter waste of time.