Whistleblower tells the Canary the DWP Restart scheme is ‘little more than glorified CV advice’

A participant on a flagship Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) back to work programme has spoken out about their dire experience on the scheme to the Canary.

In particular, the whistleblower has exposed how notorious private outsourcing company Maximus is doing the bare minimum to help participants into employment – all while raking in its enormous profits.

Maximus’s Restart Scheme sham for the DWP

Specifically, the whistleblower approached the Canary about the DWP’s Restart Scheme.

In a nutshell, this is supposed to be a twelve-month tailored employment support package for certain benefit claimants. The department makes this a mandatory requirement for some claimants to participate in to get their benefits. And notably, it can sanction those that do not comply with the scheme.

Since June 2021, a slate of private firms, including notorious companies like Maximus, Serco, and G4S, have run the scheme in different areas across England and Wales. Moreover, in July, the DWP awarded extension contracts to contractors of the programme. It means that the scheme is now running until June 2026.

However, the Canary has previously highlighted a damning rap-sheet of the scheme’s failures to date. Most notably, providers weren’t hitting their already disgracefully low targets for helping people find work.

Since the Canary detailed this in August, the DWP has released new data on the scheme. Once again, these continue to paint a dire picture.

Figures to October 2024 showed that of the 720,000 people who have started the scheme to date, just 170,600 – less than a quarter – have met the so-called job outcome.

Now, the Canary’s whistleblower has shed light on just what the DWP is forking over over a billion more to these infamous outsourcing companies for. Unsurprisingly as it turns out – it amounts to very little.

Maximus says: your ‘dream job isn’t always achievable’

The Restart participant requested that we keep his name anonymous. He has been looking for work since graduating from university with a PhD in December 2023. The participant told the Canary that:

I am from a working class background, and I have often found it difficult to secure long-term employment. I erroneously assumed that having a PhD would automatically provide me with many opportunities but, as I’m sure you are aware, the job market remains extremely tough.

So, while seeking out opportunities for employment, he’d begun claiming Universal Credit. During this time, the DWP had made him attend fortnightly appointments with his work coach. The DWP mandates some claimants do this to prove they’re meeting their job search commitments.

Then, in June, the DWP forced him onto the Restart Scheme. Maximus holds the contract for it in the scheme participant’s area. He expressed to the Canary how he’d had reservations about the scheme from the start. However, he had engaged with it nonetheless.

And notably, a Maximus job coach had assured him in his first meeting with them that they would provide him with the support he needed to get into work that would match his qualifications. However, this has been far from the case in practice.

He explained that his career goal is to enter academia, since this is the “natural progression” for someone with a PhD like his. However, he described to the Canary that his advisor has told him to:

look for more menial jobs that are local.

In correspondence the participant shared with the Canary, she wrote to him that:

I have been happy to work with you on securing roles that match your experience and interests, but unfortunately our dream job isn’t always achievable in the immediate future, which is why we have discussed, and worked on applications for, placeholder jobs to do while building professional credentials including presenting at conferences and publishing papers.

Right-wing narratives around work missing the point

Of course, the condescending implication here was that he hasn’t found work because he’s aiming too high, or too selectively.

It’s premised on a prevailing myth that the right-wing corporate media and politicians regularly espouse. This is the fallacious notion that people aren’t finding work because they’re being too picky, or are unprepared to take roles that don’t match their qualifications. Naturally, this ties into its demonising narratives too – pitching people out of work seeking welfare support as ‘scroungers’.

But this puerile ‘pull up your bootstraps’ mentality is missing some key points. Predominantly, the fact that there simply aren’t enough jobs for the number of people looking for work anyway.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has estimated that the number of job vacancies in the UK is currently around 818,000. This also happens to be the 29th consecutive quarter in which vacancy numbers have fallen. In other words, available roles continue to decline – and this has been a long-term trend.

By contrast, for Universal Credit claimants alone, more than 1.6 million are under its search for work conditionality regime.

So, in reality, there are too few jobs period – let alone roles that suit people’s skills and qualifications.

Support only extends so far where money is concerned

The Restart participant is a case and point of how none of the right-wing corporate media’s narrative is remotely true either. He had readily looked and applied for local positions outside academia, expressing that:

I was also informed that I should look for suitable roles outside of academia and this is something I have been happy to do.

But crucially, even when he had secured an interview for a local role, Maximus had been unwilling to give him the financial support he needed to attend it.

This was for position based in the East Midlands, where he lives. However, the company was hosting the interviews in London. The problem was, he was unable to afford the travel costs to get there.

Yet, when he applied for financial support for this from Maximus, the company wasn’t forthcoming. His job advisor said it would not provide this unless he confirmed the company wouldn’t accept remote interviews.

She then told him that the funding Maximus has access to for running the scheme was not a “bottomless coffer”. She detailed how Restart does offer to cover travel expenses to and from interviews, but that:

the reasonable assumption upon which this provision was founded is that these interviews will be local.

Eventually, Maximus did agree to stump up the cost of his £86 day-return train ticket to London. However, his job advisor initially refused to support the participant with other expenses, such as Underground fares.

It was only due to his persistence that Maximus later agreed to cover his other travel-related expenses as well. Notably, this was after a Maximus business manager got involved in his case.

The point here is that Maximus could have offered him this from the start. Instead however, it forced the scheme participant through a bureaucratic back-and-forth with his job advisor. He expressed how the stress of this and time involved in fighting for support had eaten into time he could otherwise have put into preparing for his interview.

Of course, in all likelihood, Maximus didn’t want to pay out for these expenses, since they would impact its bottom line.

Making a mockery of meaningful work promises

A prestigious association had also invited the graduate Restart participant to present his PhD research at its annual conference. But once again, he didn’t have the financial means to attend this. Despite expressing the incredible networking opportunity it would present, Maximus once again refused to support him.

This in particular underscored the inflexibility of the programme in helping individuals with work-related opportunities. His job advisor explained that the company is equipped to provide funding for a select number of expenses, such as meetings, courses, job interviews, work or interview clothing, and childcare costs.

So while she admitted that the conference was “undoubtedly beneficial” to his “professional development”, she said that it fell outside the remit of what Restart covers.

Largely then, the job advisor’s comments made a mockery of the idea these work schemes are there to help claimants find meaningful work.

Evidently, the Maximus employee’s focus was on shunting this participant into any local job, rather than helping him into skill-appropriate work that would aid his career prospects.

Not about breaking down real barriers

Ultimately, it all shows how these schemes do little, if anything, to uplift people from marginalised communities. In short: social mobility simply isn’t the goal. In the Canary’s whistleblower’s case, his working class financial circumstances meant that he was ostensibly locked out of roles equivalent to his skills and qualifications.

And this is the rub: the DWP’s mandatory work programmes have never been about breaking down the real barriers to employment.

Instead, it’s a stick to beat down people on benefits struggling to get by, and a fig leaf to make the government look tough on claimants. In other words, it’s forcing claimants onto these schemes, under the pretense it’s doing its job to drive down rates of unemployment.

At the same time, it can continue to abuse benefit claimants as its political football, as it does the barest minimum to actually help people into work that pays a livable, decent wage.

Glorified CV advice from the DWP

Overall, the Restart participant told the Canary that this “tailored support” the advisor much-vaunted consisted of “very superficial” help with job applications. Specifically, he described how, the support Maximus had given him had been:

very basic and quite poor CV advice.

Besides this, his Maximus job advisor had filled out a couple of applications on his behalf, but he said:

they have come to nothing, not even an interview because she was unable to match my skills and experience to the criteria they were looking for. She just produced some clichéd statements. The interviews I have secured are down to my hard work, with little or no input from Maximus.

He therefore mused to the Canary:

Looking at my CV and applications and spotting a few typos or grammatical errors. Is this what Maximus is being taxpayers’ money for?

And it’s a pertinent question.

What are we paying Maximus for?

The fact is, the DWP is paying astronomical sums to Maximus and other providers for this paltry service.

Originally, the DWP had estimated a cost of £1,800 per participant for the scheme. Specifically, this was its estimations when it had signed the initial contracts. However, due to teething problems it encountered after the launch of the scheme, it had to renegotiate the contracts.

The DWP then projected it would pay £1.68bn to providers for supporting 692,000 participants. Crucially however, a December 2022 National Audit Office (NAO) evaluation highlighted how this was poor value for money compared to other DWP employment programmes. It meant Restart would cost £2,429 per participant. This made it more expensive than the government’s former flagship Work Programme. It was also more costly than multiple iterations of its Work and Health Programme.

Now, with the full figures for people starting on the scheme available to June, we can see it’s actually worse than this. Significantly fewer people started on the scheme than it had projected. This was just 639,100, compared to its anticipated 692,000. Moreover, the Canary has calculated that it still paid providers more than £1.68bn in total.

So, in reality, the DWP actually paid companies an average of approximately £2,632 per participant.

Of course, this also wasn’t the amount of people these companies actually helped into long-term work either. It was simply the number of people who had started on the scheme.

In other words, the government appears to have paid profiteering outsourcing giants many thousands of pounds per participant to deliver glorified CV advice.

Lining private pockets, shafting claimants – DWP style

Signing off of the Restart Scheme contract extensions was one of the first things the new Labour-led DWP did. But the failures of this scheme so far should serve as forewarning for what is to come from further Labour back-to-work plans.

For all DWP boss Liz Kendall’s talk about helping people into “good” work – Restart has shown it’s far from the real outcome of the DWP’s mandatory work programmes. Needless to say, it’s certainly a far cry from a tailored and comprehensive employment support the DWP holds it up as.

Some people may well welcome support getting their CVs up to scratch. However, it’s clearly a stupendous waste of taxpayers’ money to hand millions over to parasitic outsourcing giants to do it.

Most importantly though, it’s more evidence the DWP should never condition benefits on people participating in dud employment schemes like this. At the end of the day, the scheme participant’s experience on Restart suggests that the programme has little to do with helping people into worthwhile, and fair work that pays.

It’s there to continue lining the pockets of the CEOs of private outsourcing companies like Maximus. And all the while the government will reap undue credit for helping people into employment. Of course, in reality, it will have done no such thing.

Featured image via screengrab