Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 15 October 2014 to Question 209722, how many work programme participants he expects to be surveyed in the evaluation he has commissioned; and what criteria he has set out for selecting those participants.

The department has commissioned a comprehensive evaluation of the Work Programme conducted by independent researchers which includes large scale participant surveys. In summer/autumn 2012 a national telephone survey that was representative of those joining the programme at that time was conducted with over 4,700 participants between six and nine months into their Work Programme journey; a follow-up survey of over 1,800 of the same participants was conducted in early 2014 when respondents had completed the two-year programme period.