If the government want to place people there has to be an incentive for the employer - would you not agree? Using big companies with outlets nation wide will cut down on the admin required to place people - if you were going to place people with small employers you would need significantly more people to administer it, I know many on here like the public sector model where admin rules but is that really cost/efficiency effective?

Agree re the point of employers NI - if you agree with it then it should apply to every penny earned. Put the minimum wage up to a level that not require tax credits and you will have significantly increased levels of unemployment.

Absolutely not because as we see all that translates to is the taxpayer subsidizing employers with free labour.

This has the knock on effect of keeping the unemployed out of a job paying minimum wage paid for by the employer not the tax payer and it also keeps the underemployed who would like more hours - underemployed.

The system is crazy. Even if we accept the weak notion that some people need to be dragged into the world of work the way it is being done simply keeps more people out of work! Utterly stupid idea.

As I'll say again, it's all about the demonisation card being played.
It helps cover up this Governments inability to regenerate the economy and create opportunities for the vast majority of unemployed who are desperate to do a fair days work, have a bit of dignity, and a few spare quid in their pockets, as opposed to the many who are scratching around on the bones of their @rses.

Iain Duncan Smith is a fooking disgrace.

Rapidly becoming the worst of a very bad bunch. A truly despicable excuse for a human being.

There are plenty of charities and not for profit organisations out there who would benefit hugely from some free labour, why give that free labour to huge profit making companies?

My view is that work placement could be very beneficial to some people. So long as its in a field relevant to their prospects, actually helps the individual and is not for such a significant amount of time. 6 months is far too long and is simply exploitation. A month full-time is adequate in my view, so long as its a relevant placement. It shouldn't happen just for the sake of it.

Agree with this.

You can see the anger in him too when he's being interviewed about such things. His face physically contorts to show the anger and contempt. I hate this man more than I hate Cameron, Miller, McVey and Grayling put together.

I am afraid some charities are as bad as poundland et al.

Have a read of thishttp://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/shame-of-the-third-sector-how-charities-got-it-wrong-on-workfare/rl

It's an old article but shows they were just as wrapped up in the scheme as private companies.

I don't see why anyone should be forced to work full time anywhere for their JSA. Charities like poundland do employ full time staff and I am sure free labour is as attractive to them as it is a private company, even more so being a charity I dare say but if any normally paid positions in charities are being replaced by workfare free labour than that is just as bad as it is at poundland.

I give to several charities on a monthly basis including the BHF who are apparently still involved in the scheme. I can see my donations heading elsewhere.

Here is a more up to date list of organisations and companies and their involvementhttp://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id

That's a depressingly large number of companies.

It would be nice to give people whatever they wanted with no strings attached but we have a bit of a dilemma. The UK isnot only becoming a low wage economy it is also becoming a low productivity economy, with productivity falling more than real wages. A major reason for that is probably employers keeping people on in this recession rather than laying them off. Two other big contributors to that are falls in North Sea oil production and reduced productivity in the financial services sector. The latter two look unlikely to recover their past glories. Output per worker in the UK is a massive 39% behind the USA's and 21% behind the G7 (excluding UK) average.

Bottom line is everyone needs to work harder for less real reward (as I have said since the financial crisis broke) and we need more investment in capital goods in the manufacturing sector. Until the economy picks up, is rebalanced and productivity increases we'll all get poorer. So, it's not just about bad employers and bad politicians it is the reality of the situtation we are in. We need to get used to it as things ain't going to change for a few years yet.

If you recall the reasons for the financial crisis it was not to do with Poundlandand Tesco or even "casino" banking it was largely to do with extending too much credit to give themasses the illusion of being better off than they really were.

My thoughts exactly when I read it.

What this says to me is the workfare is simply a means to subvert the minimum wage.

None of that has got anything to do with workfare schemes where employers are getting free labour paid for by the tax payer and people are being compelled to go on these schemes under threat of having benefits withdrawn.

To be fair the previous analysis is fair enough but if thats the case why not just accept unemployment will be where it is and forget trying to force people into non existant jobs to make the stats look good. Subserdising big companies might help them but not anyone else and I wonder how many Workfare sign up companies pay accountants massive sums to avoid or reduce their tax payment.

Unemployment has been much higher in recent recessions and once the economy picked up so did the employment situation and unemployment fell as a consequence.

Fiddling the figures fools very few and "under employment" is just making the situation worse for thousands of people. Tax/NI breaks for those employing new staff on full time hours (or moving part timers into full time work) might be another option to increase the overall revenue from those in work.

On a slight tangent, there's a good piece of sensible writing on the subject of large families claiming benefits in The Guardian rlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/mother-11-mansion-media-families-benefitsrl which raises the issues again of "divide and conquer" politics where sections of society are targetted by Ministers and fed to certain parts of the news media for a well orchestrated public humiliation, follow the link to The Sun in that article if you want to see how to present a totally one sided news story in a national newspaper in order to support your prefered flavour of government.

I agree that the woman shouldn't be publicly named and shamed, but the taxpayer shouldn't be expected to fork out what is a significant sum of money each year because she can't keep her legs closed.