Campaigners have welcomed a Supreme Court ruling that the government’s back-to-work scheme was legally flawed.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith failed in a bid to overturn an earlier ruling that the regulations underpinning the programmes, making jobseekers work unpaid in certain circumstances, were not valid.
Cait Reilly, from Birmingham, challenged a requirement under the scheme that she should work for free at a Poundland store to receive jobseeker’s allowance.
She had to give up voluntary work at a local museum in November 2011 to stack shelves and clean floors at the store after being told she would lose her allowance if she failed to carry out the work placement.
HGV driver Jamie Wilson, from Nottingham, who is a qualified mechanic, was also involved in the legal action after he objected to doing unpaid work cleaning furniture and lost his jobseeker’s allowance for six months as a result.
Cait Reilly said: “I am really pleased with today’s judgment, which I hope will serve to improve the current system and assist jobseekers who have been unfairly stripped of their benefits.”
Despite criticism from groups such as the Right to Work campaign that the schemes constituted “slave labour”, the Supreme Court ruled that they did not constitute forced or compulsory work.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said:“The government say they want to make work pay. But this kind of scheme is work with no pay, and employers can use it to replace paid staff with free labour.
“Sacking paid staff and replacing them with unpaid conscripts is the opposite of making work pay.
“Instead we need policies that create real jobs such as a jobs guarantee for the long-term unemployed and young people.
“Ministers must stop treating hardworking people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own as if they are all potential benefit cheats.”
Lawyers said unemployed people who had lost their jobseeker’s allowance for not complying with the schemes – dubbed “workfare” by campaigners – should be able to reclaim the money.
The PCS welcomed the decision by the three judges, but said it is disappointing they ruled the government’s workfare schemes do not constitute “forced or compulsory labour” under the European Convention on Human Rights.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “While ministers disgracefully changed the law to over-ride the original court ruling, this decision confirms their schemes were unlawful but shows we need to keep up the pressure to end workfare.
“Jobcentre staff do not go to work to be in conflict with the people they are there to help, and we believe workfare schemes are exploitative and counter-productive and should be scrapped.”
The schemes are seen as a key element of the Coalition’s plans to get people back into work, with unemployment at 7.7% in the three months to July.
