The entire welfare to work system needs to be overhauled, so says a new report from the Social Market Foundation.

The think tank says that the government’s current efforts to get people off benefits and into long term work are failing.

It calls for:

• Replacing the many different employment support programmes provided by Jobcentre Plus, Pathways to Work, Flexible New Deal and others, with a single contracted-out support system for all jobseekers, from the first day of their claim.
• Providers being paid by results for getting people into sustained employment.
• Incentivising providers to find work for the hardest to help by receiving increasing payments for placing a larger proportion of jobseekers into work and thus enabling them to reach the hardest to help.
• Supplying information on the proportion of the last two years a person has been unemployed should be made available to identify and help those stuck in revolving door employment.
• Making outcome payments to providers whose clients remain in employment for more than one year.

SMF director Ian Mulheirn says: “Two out of every five claimants helped to find work are back claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance within six months. There is clearly something very wrong with the system as it currently stands. Revolving door employment fails the taxpayer who pays for the schemes and the benefits, but it also fails the individuals as the ‘low pay – no pay’ cycle has hugely detrimental effects on their future employment chances, income, health and families.”