Support for All in the UK Work Programme? Differential Payments, Same Old Problem.

James Rees,Elle Carter,Adam Whitworth

doi:10.1111/spol.12058

James Rees, Elle Carter + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12058

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Abstract

The UK has been a high profile policy innovator in welfare-to-work provision which has led in the Coalition government's Work Programme to a fully outsourced, ‘black box’ model with payments based overwhelmingly on job outcome results. A perennial fear in such programmes is providers' incentives to ‘cream’ and ‘park’ claimants, and the Department for Work and Pensions has sought to mitigate such provider behaviours through Work Programme design, particularly via the use of claimant groups and differential pricing. In this article, we draw on a qualitative study of providers in the programme alongside quantitative analysis of published performance data to explore evidence around creaming and parking. The combination of the quantitative and qualitative evidence suggest that creaming and parking are widespread, seem systematically embedded within the Work Programme, and are driven by a combination of intense cost-pressures and extremely ambitious performance targets alongside overly diverse claimant groups and inadequately calibrated differentiated payment levels.

Highlights

In common with much of the advanced economies (Lødemel and Trickey 2001), since the arrival of New Labour in 1997 the UK has made a decisive shift from a ‘passive’ to an ‘active’ welfare system in which eligibility for out of work benefits is tied increasingly tightly and explicitly to the stated obligation to seek paid work
The Work Programme represents a radical extension of the incremental evolution of employment services witnessed in recent years in the UK
It implements for the first time, at a national level, a fully outsourced ‘black box’ model with payments based almost entirely on job outcome results

Summary

Introduction

In common with much of the advanced economies (Lødemel and Trickey 2001), since the arrival of New Labour in 1997 the UK has made a decisive shift from a ‘passive’ to an ‘active’ welfare system in which eligibility for out of work benefits is tied increasingly tightly and explicitly to the stated obligation to seek paid work. The argument from the Department for Work and Pension (DWP) is that the specific design of the Work Programme – the existence of minimum service guarantees and, in particular, the use of nine claimant groups with differential payments across each – would effectively mitigate incentives for prime providers to cream and park, and the public statements of the DWP remain consistent in arguing that there is no evidence to suggest that this is not working (PAC 2013).

Results

Conclusion