The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been ordered to release the names of employers involved in a controversial back-to-work scheme criticised for using the unemployed as a free source of labour.
The DWP’s workfare scheme allows anonymous businesses and charities to take on unemployed people, who in some cases have undertaken weeks of unpaid work as a condition of receiving benefits.
However, following a freedom of information challenge that has lasted 15 months, a first-tier tribunal has ruled that the DWP must publish the names of the organisations that have benefitted from the scheme.
Disputing the department’s claim that the businesses and charities involved would be seriously financially damaged by negative publicity should their names become public, the tribunal said that the DWP had offered “a paucity of compelling economic evidence” to support this.
The ruling will apply to all three of the department’s main employment programmes, which are mandatory work activity (MWA), the work experience scheme and the Work Programme.
The department has said that it is “very disappointed” at the ruling and is considering its next move. It has already appealed a decision made by Appeal Court judges, who ruled that workers had been made to work unlawfully at organisations.
Saying that charities would lose donations and customers because of the negative publicity they would receive if their involvement with the programmes were made public, the department might take the case to the High Court or even deploy a ministerial veto to ban publication of the names.
A spokesman for the DWP said that releasing the information about the names will cause placement organisations to be unfairly targeted and will harm jobseekers’ prospects.
However, campaigners against the schemes insist that workfare has meant less paid work for people across the UK and exploitation for the jobseekers forced to work for nothing.