Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Within the UK, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to over 22 million claimants and customers.

In addition, DWP is responsible for development, implementation and of a multifaceted set of active labour market policies to help disadvantaged adults receiving benefits to work or advance in work.  As such, the agency is a major public policy actor in the consumption, the application, and also the production of evidence to guide innovations in such policies, programmes, and practices for large numbers and very diverse types of benefit claimants.

These labour market interventions are designed to reflect the strategic direction of DWP labour market objectives, which are to:

• Facilitate the smooth and effective functioning of the labour market, speeding up job matches, addressing mismatches in supply and demand, and promoting social justice;

• Tackle worklessness and out-of-work poverty, reducing inactivity, and promoting sustained employment;

• Reduce in-work poverty, promote social mobility, and reduce individual dependence and state expenditure on benefits through more or better work.

DWP is thus in need of extensive and reliable evidence on ‘what works’ for quite different claimant groups, across different timescales, and for different degrees of labour market disadvantage. 

This paper will explore examples of how the DWP is attempting to improve the ways of building and utilising evidence, ideas, and knowledge from sources within the UK and outside to inform policies and spur innovation as it addresses issues of adult labour market disadvantage.  The paper will highlight the opportunities and constraints affecting the production and application of evidence, and point to particularly influential types of studies.