Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the underspend on the Restart scheme contract exceeded £1.2 billion.

As per the NAO report, the original estimated cost for Restart was £2.58bn, this has been revised to £1.68bn creating a £0.9m underspend.

The underspend is not expected to exceed £1.2bn. The original value of the contracts was £2.6bn. As explained in the accounting officer note in July 2022 and the NAO report, the lower numbers participating in the programme due to the better than anticipated labour market position means the spend is expected to be around £1.7bn – so the underspend is expected to be around £0.9bn. Payment is contingent on performance and that the Department retains options to refer more people and to extend the programme so we cannot yet confirm a final spend figure for the programme.