Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have for the future of (1) the Kickstart programme, or (2) its successor scheme.

The Department for Work and Pension’s Kickstart Scheme has now seen over 130,000 jobs started by young people. Young people can still start a Kickstart job until the 31st March and our priority remains to get as many young people who need one into a Kickstart job by that date.

1) The Department for Work and Pensions is monitoring and evaluating the Kickstart scheme throughout and after its implementation, and will continue to evaluate the longer term outcomes for Kickstart participants after they have completed their six-month jobs. Fieldwork for the commissioned evaluation will continue until at least 2023 and we will publish the findings of the evaluation once complete.

2) Building on our experience of the Kickstart Scheme and the many new relationships we have established with employers, we have launched the Way to Work campaign. This is a new concerted national drive to help half a million people who are currently on benefits and job ready to move into jobs by the end of June 2022, supporting them to take their next step to building a more secure and prosperous future.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, which has been developed quickly.

The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.