I wonder whether the governments Work Programme can really help the unemployed if large multi million pound companies use it to avoid employing staff.  They take on people for work experience when in fact they could be taught the work in less than a day but are then left alone to stack shelves for a month with no chance of a job at the end of it.  Then they are back looking for work while the company that gave them a months so called work experience take on another person for a month of work experience.  No wages to pay out or any holiday pay or national insurance, it's a guaranteed way of taking more paid jobs out of the system.

The government can talk tough but if the large companies pulled out then the work experience placements would dry up but maybe a few more real jobs would be available as the companies would need people to stack the shelves.

As I said before, when you start on the work programme and are assessed you will fall into three categories especially if you are put with Working Links.  Imagine if you are classified as Job Ready. They issue you with a new CV, it might be worse than the one you already have but it ticks a box for them as helping you.  They then send your CV to many employers and call you in once every fortnight or so to do jobsearch.  It's possible to make out a case that if a person is job ready then they should not be on the work programme costing the government money because they are likely to be doing their jobsearch at home and with  a good CV they don't need any help from a work programme provider.