Workfare in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, "workfare" refers to government workfare policies whereby individuals must undertake work in return for their benefit payments or risk losing them. Workfare policies are politically controversial. Supporters claim that such policies help people move off welfare and into employment (see Workfare) whereas critics argue that they are analogous to slavery or indentured servitude and counterproductive in decreasing unemployment.

Although actual "workfare" only began in the UK in the early-1990s with the first Major government's "Community Action" scheme in 1993 which was replaced in 1996 with the better known "Project Work" which was subsequently replaced by New Labour's "New Deal", welfare to work or "active labour market policies" go back much earlier to 1986 and the second Thatcher government's introduction of compulsory "Restart" interviews for unemployed claimants. Restart lasted until 1991 when it was superseded by the "make work" scheme "Employment Action" which lasted until 1993. "Make work schemes" are not workfare as such, but are very much a composite part of welfare to work or "active labour market policies" aka "welfare reform".

The definition used here to distinguish between "outright" workfare, and "make work schemes", is that workfare is "work for benefits" either for a company, or in the public sector, or what has been called "bogus volunteering" for a charity. This is undertaken as the condition of still being able to claim unemployment benefit, as distinct from claimants receiving that but also being in receipt of "a small supplemental payment". As such, it can be argued that welfare to work/"active labour market policies" first properly appeared in the early 1980s along with mass unemployment, in the form of the state run Manpower Services Commission created by the Heath government in the early 1970s whilst Full Employment still existed, along with the Youth Opportunities Programme scheme first introduced by the Callaghan Labour government of the late-70s but being continued and further applied by the incoming Conservative government. The YOP was replaced in 1983 by the better-known Youth Training Scheme (YTS).

...
Wikipedia