A parliamentary committee has cast doubts on the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) ability to actually support people into work.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) pulled up the department for taking over Skills from the Department for Education whilst in the midst of forcing people into work by any means. It also raised concerns about the reduction of contact with the Jobcentre that Universal Credit (UC) claimants have.
DWP doesn’t have the skills to take on Skills brief
The PAC is responsible for ensuring that departments and projects are spending money wisely. It also ensures that departments effectively serve the public. As claimants already know, the DWP is seriously lacking in the latter.
As previously reported by the Canary, PAC’s DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 reporthauled the DWP over the coals over their treatment of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants. But it also highlighted how the DWP were failing UC claimants too:
We have concerns about the Department’s capacity to manage this change at the same time as setting up the new integrated jobs and careers service, and are keen to understand how it expects the new arrangements will work in practice.
DWP, as cloak and dagger as ever
The main concern was that despite all its promises of how great it would be, the department hadn’t actually detailed how it planned to implement it. Which, let’s be honest, tends to be a massive issue for the DWP when making their usual hollow promises.
The report said:
The Department has not yet made clear how it plans to bring together the jobs and careers service with its new responsibilities for adult skills, in order to deliver the government’s objectives.
The report highlighted that when the National Careers Advice service comes to an end in October 2026, DWP will be taking it over. However, of course, they haven’t said how this will be done.
PAC is also concerned that there is already a shortage of work coaches. This means support for claimants has been reduced. It says that this, along with the tight timeline the DWP have set itself, could:
make it difficult for the Department to absorb its new responsibilities and provide an effective and joined-up jobs, careers and skills offer.
Universal Credit claimants shafted too
The report also raised concerns that this is happening whilst the DWP continues to cut the amount of contact a UC claimant has with their work coach. The report said the department seemed “complacent” back in July when discussing the impact this reduction would have on claimants. The committee was disappointed to find that since then, the DWP has decided to cut the initial meeting with a job coach down from 50 to 30 minutes.
The report highlights that the DWP made this change with:
Limited evidence on the impact this change may have.
The report says that while the DWP sought feedback from staff, which of course came back supporting the change, it didn’t bother to ask claimants. Because obviously they didn’t ask the people negatively impacted how something was impacting them.
The DWP, of course, argued that if time allows, then meetings can be extended. But as the report states, this is at the work coach’s discretion. There’s also the problem that without clear guidelines on extending meetings, claimants will slip through the cracks. PAC has said the DWP must continue to monitor this situation and actually fucking get feedback from claimants.
How many work coaches actually are there?
One interesting thing from the report was that the DWP does not publish data on work coach numbers. So, despite the government repeatedly deciding that work coaches can be redeployed into all of their new services, we don’t actually publicly know how many can be redeployed.
As the Canary has extensively reported, work coaches are going to be expected to do a lot in the coming years. As well as the careers advice and skills, they’re also going to be moving into GP surgeries. They’re also being made to bother disabled people who’ve already been found unfit for work. There’s also the pipedream thatPIP claimants will have a named caseworker, which presumably will also fall to work coaches.
But considering the public don’t have any data on how many work coaches there actually are, we can’t accurately see how significant the problem is. Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what the DWP wants.
DWP just a catalogue of failures
At this point, the DWP has such an undeniable rate of failures. Near enough everybody in the land is bringing them to task. This latest report is yet more evidence of just how little the DWP cares about the people it is supposed to support. More than anything, it’s clear that the department needs to be completely scrapped. It should be rebuilt from the ground up, with disabled and poor people’s needs at the heart of it.
Featured image via the Canary
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