Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of lessons from the experience of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act in the US to inform his plans to replace the Work Programme when the current contracts come to an end.

We continuously review our employment programmes and consider global good practice examples.

Many features of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act are consistent with the current Work Programme framework and with Universal Credit which ensures work always pays and enables earnings tracking.

We are considering how proposed improvements in the structure of US services could benefit UK employment support in the design of our future offers, for example our cross government look into supporting collaborations between services at a local level.