LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – 93 percent of those who enlisted in the government’s flagship programme to combat long-term unemployment were unable to find work. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak introduced the £2.9 billion Restart initiative last year with the goal of providing up to 12 months of support to those who have been out of work for a long time.
However, figures produced in response to a written parliamentary question from, Alison McGovern, Labour’s shadow employment minister, show that out of the 226,785 people who started on the scheme, only 16,180 later left for reasons such as starting a job or moving off the scheme’s intensive work-search regime.
That was quite terrible, McGovern said. They were supposed to be in a jobless crisis, yet those folks were attempting to re-enter the workforce.
The Restart plan is mandatory for benefit claimants referred by jobcentre work coaches, and it is implemented by commercial contractors such as Serco, G4S, and Maximus, who are paid mostly on the basis of performance.
Unfortunately, despite having spent more than £2.5 billion on Restart, the government’s inept [Department for Jobs and Pensions] was better at leasing out failing schemes to G4S and Serco than it was at finding people to work, she continued. It was no surprise that the north-west and Greater Manchester were the areas where that government’s failure was most pronounced
In those two regions, out of the 29,720 people, 1,370 who availed on the scheme have left it — almost 5%.
Restart is also having trouble recruiting enough people to fulfil projected caseload levels — the about 225,000 people who had started the programme by the end of April was 40 percent less than the 375,000 people who were expected to have signed up by that time. The eligibility criteria for Restart have been expanded to allow more people to be referred to the programme.
Long-term unemployment was far lower than projected during the peak of the pandemic, according to Tony Wilson, head of the Institute for Employment Studies, however “inactivity” which is occured due to people opting out of the labour market has increased.
The government had set aside substantial cash to solve an unemployment crisis that never materialised. There hadn’t been any mass unemployment. Instead, they were in the midst of a participation crisis. So the crisis they anticipated wasn’t the one they were facing, he explained. Employment was still half a million lower than it had been before the outbreak. Economic unemployment had increased by 400,000 since the pandemic began, he added.
When the DWP’s Kickstart youth unemployment scheme expired earlier this year, it came 90,000 shy of its 250,000 job-creation target. The Treasury reclaimed the money that was underspent as a result, and any underspend on Restart is likely to follow suit. Instead, Wilson believes it should be used to combat economic inactivity.
They currently had the highest rate of economic inactivity, or unemployment, due to long-term illness in 20 years. That was a long Covid, that was NHS waiting lines, and that was mental health issues worsening as the pandemic progressed. They were not doing anything to address any of the reasons that had contributed to the decline in the labour force, which had resulted in economic inactivity and labour shortages. Because unemployment was so low, the money simply went back to the Treasury.
Thanks to their balanced approach at managing the economy, unemployment was at its lowest level since 1974, at 3.7 percent, a DWP official stated. In less than a year since its inception, the Restart scheme had already helped a quarter of a million long-term unemployed people, with more on the way. Providers were compensated based on how many job seekers they were able to assist into employment, thereby delivering value to the taxpayer, they added.
