Minister for civil society Nick Hurd has refused to accept that the government has made any mistakes with the Work Programme and insisted it is still a better regime than Labour’s welfare-to-work system.

In oral answers to Cabinet Office questions last week, Hurd was asked what lessons he would learn so that the “mistakes of the Work Programme are not repeated” and so that charities can feel confident getting involved in back-to-work schemes once again.

Hurd replied: “I do not necessarily recognise that mistakes have been made. Payment by results is a tough and challenging regime, but each exercise will be different and the process will evolve.

“It is a better regime than paying for failure and mediocrity, which is what the Labour government did.”

He said the next test would be the probation reforms, and that it is already clear from the Ministry of Justice’s proposals that “lessons have been learned on having more contracts, paying much more attention to how the supply chain is managed, and investing in capacity-building in the voluntary sector so it can do more”.

He added that more than 350 voluntary organisations in the supply chain are doing “incredibly valuable work” to get long-term unemployed people back to work and saluted their “collective early success in getting more than 200,000 long-term unemployed people into work”.