Well at least we now know what "a success" is ....

because the Work Programme is a success, 'giving hope' to the unemployed, as Minister for Employment Mark Hoban told us all on the 17th of this month, and today the Department for Work and Pensions published the Work Programme statistical summary June 2013  which summary contains the latest Work Programme official statistics on referrals to the Work Programme, attachments to the Work Programme and Work Programme validated job outcomes and the numbers of sustainment payments (but no consolidated information at all on "actual cash sums involved") made to Work Programme "Prime" providers up to 31 March 2013, which tells us that:-

From June 1 2011 to March 31 2013

• There were 1.20 million referred to the Work Programme and 1.16 million attached to a provider;

• 132 thousand Job Outcome payments were made to providers, which represents 13.0% of eligible Referrals. 

Work and Pensions Minister Mark Hoban hailed the figures, saying the Work Programme was helping those written off by system get back into work:  "That is a lot of lives transformed as a consequence of this programme, people who have been able to achieve their aspiration to look after themselves and their family,***" he told BBC News.

Unsurprisingly perhaps the Labour Party sought to pour cold water on this clear and obvious to all success :-

Liam Byrne MP, Labour's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to today's Work Programme figures said:

"The Work Programme hasn't worked for over a million people.   Three years into the parliament and nearly nine out of ten people on this flagship programme have been failed. Worse of all, the government missed every single one of its minimum targets and in nearly half the country, the Work Programme is literally worse than doing nothing. No wonder the benefits bill is £21 billion higher than planned and no wonder the Chancellor himself was forced to attack 'under-performing' back to work programmes.   We can't go on like this. We desperately need a change of course starting with a compulsory jobs guarantee that would make sure everyone out of work long term would have to take a job after two years."

*** he probably means those lucky enough to actually have found some sort of work via the WP, but equally he could also be referring to the owners/shareholders in the Work Programme Prime Providers ...

Update : Thursday 27th pm.

The obviously deeply cynical Patrick Butler of the G, who rather than take the word of Mark Hoban and whatever other members of the Grand Alliance ranks who have been primed to go around telling everyone what a "roaring success" the WP is; has done some investigating and number-crunching of the published stats and, gosh, brave man wishes to dispute the Mark and Co version of what story those stats tell:-

The government's flagship welfare to work scheme has come under fire after official figures show it is still failing to help the most disadvantaged people into jobs.

Just 5.3% of people on incapacity benefit were helped into employment for at least six months by the Work Programme in its second year of operation, well below the government's minimum performance benchmark of 16.5%.

Providers also failed to meet the contractual benchmark for getting young people aged 18-24 off unemployment benefit and into jobs, and marginally missed the minimum target for getting jobless clients aged over 25 into sustained work.

Across the three jobseeker groups, successful job outcome levels stood at 24.9% against contracted levels of 27.5%.
 
Ian Mulheirn, director of the Social Market Foundation thinktank, even hinted that whilst the official figures represented "a big improvement on the first year of the programme, failure to meet the targets could put some work programme providers in danger of having their contracts terminated".  

But he quickly added, no doubt to reassure those ERSA members who had read that whilst quaffing coffee and biscuits, and suffered a choking fit; that "Poor performance against the DWP's minimum levels cannot be taken as evidence that providers are doing a bad job or that the scheme offers poor value for money: we simply do not know whether an alternative approach would fare better or worse in current economic conditions", and then went for some further muddying of the waters by concluding that "what it does show is that the scheme was poorly designed with serious consequences for long-term unemployed people"

"Ministers launched the £5bn work programme in 2011 with the explicit aim of getting 2.4m long term unemployed and sickness benefit recipients back into the job market".

Only 2.25 million short of "target" then ... and it would appear the improvement in WP outcomes will have to be "phenomenal" to get any where near it.  Something that Mark and Co appeared to acknowledge recently when they announced that get tougher with the unemployed who are 'making the Work Programme fail' regime