The Pathways to Work scheme is to be scrapped as part of Conservative plans to introduce a single welfare to work scheme. This follows a report released last week by the National Audit Office calling Pathways "poor value for money" and "ineffective".

Susie Squire, Iain Duncan Smith’s special adviser for media, told CSW yesterday: “We’re not doing Pathways.” When asked when the scheme will end, she said: “We’re negotiating that as we speak; there’ll be more details to come. We hope to have a work programme in place next April.”

The Department of Work and Pensions has not previously confirmed its plans for the Pathway to Work scheme, saying only that details of Conservative welfare plans are yet to be decided by ministers.

The Pathways scheme was set up to help people on Incapacity Benefit (IB) and Employment and Support Allowance find work. If someone is found to be well enough to take on some form of work, they enter into the scheme which provides tailored help for them to find employment.

The NAO report found that: “Once accepted on to IB, new claimants are just as likely to move into employment without Pathways support as they are with it. In other words, jobs achieved through mandatory [NAO italics] participation in Pathways would have been achieved without the programme.”

Contractors providing the scheme were criticised for not achieving the targets set out in their contracts, and for performing less well than Jobcentre Plus-led schemes. The NAO found that contractors secured a greater proportion of people into work when clients had volunteered to join the scheme than among people for whom the scheme was compulsory.

Some contractors subcontract parts of the Pathways scheme, and DWP was criticised for not knowing more about these subcontractors. When contacted by CSW, DWP could not provide the names of subcontractors and suggested contacting each contractor in turn.

Squire confirmed to CSW that Conservative proposals “will be delivered by private contractors”. She said of NAO criticisms of contractors: “It’s something we’ll take into account and hopefully something we can learn from, but we shouldn’t let that derail our whole work programme.”

The report praised DWP for attempting to tackle the situation with the Pathways scheme, which cost £94m in 2008-09. But the report found that DWP could not measure the exact contribution of the scheme to the overall reduction of 125,000 in the number of people claiming IB. Currently there are 2.63 million people receiving IB.

According to the report, the scheme’s results have largely been achieved by bringing forward medical assessments rather than through Pathways; the Conservatives plan to accelerate such tests. Meanwhile, former welfare minister Jim Knight warned that assessors are already struggling to meet existing targets

Written by Joshua Chambers