The government’s own assessment of how the work programme is going, conducted for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) by independent experts, suggests it is still badly under-performing.

The “work programme evalulation: interim meta-report” was signed off ready for publication in September 2013, but has been sat on ever since.

A Whitehall source told Channel 4 News that the decision not to publish was taken “at a ministerial level” on the basis that the department didn’t want another embarrassment to deal with.

The report is not written in the most strident language, but contains confirmation that one of the DWP’s pet projects is failing in one of its central tasks.

Challenging some of the government’s rhetoric and thinking, the report says there is “no conclusive evidence that sanctions were changing job search behaviour or increasing job entry rates.”

It goes on to say there is: “little or no evidence among (work programme participants) of preference for a life on benefits …”