John Downie of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Services argues that workfare is effectively a "handout to business" whereby taxpayers are subsidising the wage bill of the private sector.
Alastair Grimes from the consultancy Rocket Science stated: "I'm not aware of people who are making money out of the Work Programme".
[10] However Employment Minister Esther McVey argued that the sale shows the success of the Work Programme, with Deloitte exiting when their business was performing well.
[11] Given that 5% of the long-term unemployed would be expected to find employment if left to their own devices the Work Programme can be considered less successful than doing nothing at all.
"[13] In February 2013 the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons revealed that the Work Programme had only got 3.6% of participants off benefits and into secure employment during the first fourteen months of its operation.
[16] A further analysis by the Public Accounts Committee found that the service that the Work Programme could offer was negatively affected by a lack of funding and that in some instances there was not enough money to provide interpreters to those with poor English language skills.
The report suggested that the level of support that the Work Programme could offer was reduced by the sheer number of people requiring help.
[19] The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith responded to the Court of Appeal judgment by announcing emergency legislation in order to correct this.
[20] It has been argued that payment-by-results whereby companies only get paid for finding people work meant that they focussed on the "easiest" cases among the long-term unemployed with the most "difficult" effectively sidelined.
They argue that because providers were not paid until an unemployed person had been in work for two years it made little economic sense to concentrate on the most "difficult cases".