I SHARE the concerns expressed in your editorial ("Jobless scheme needs more work", The Herald, February 13) that the UK Government may still fail to see sense despite the latest blow to its back-to-work schemes.
It seems to be blind to the concerns about the many failings of the Work Programme. When found to be breaking the law, Ministers seem eager to challenge the courts and redraft the rules rather than accept the verdict and reimburse those who have been exploited.
What seems especially perverse is that Poundland and other companies get free, if disgruntled, labour which must be a disincentive to creating real jobs. We have a flagship programme supposedly helping unemployed people which only has a 3.5% success rate, makes millions for private companies and actually reduces the number of jobs in the economy.
It is time to consign the Work Programme to history and find better ways to tackle unemployment. There are many better ways of supporting unemployed people to find work, including Community Jobs Scotland, which has a success rate in excess of 12 times that of the Work Programme.
Why has there not been a meaningful challenge to the dire performance of the Department of Work and Pensions Work Programme and investment redirected to more successful models? The UK Government needs to start thinking about how it can emulate and expand approaches that actually work and abandon this failed experiment in profit-led public services.
Sadly, I strongly suspect that it will not, opting to continue failing unemployed people instead.
Martin Sime,
Chief executive, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article