Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the net effect of the Access to Work scheme on public expenditure.

Estimating a Value for Money figure for Access to Work is difficult – there is no readily available comparison group against which to assess the difference the programme makes to someone’s likelihood of being in work.

Access to Work covers a wide range of different types of support. Each individual case is different and it is not possible to estimate the return to the Exchequer for each one.

My officials are considering how best to estimate the return on investment delivered by Access to Work.