A multi-billion-pound scheme to help long-term unemployed people into work has been branded extremely poor by MPs.

The government's Work Programme only managed to get 3.6% of the people on the scheme off benefits and into secure employment in its first 14 months, the Public Accounts Committee said.

The government said it was "early days" for the scheme and the committee's report had painted a "skewed picture".

But Labour said the programme was "worse than doing nothing".

The 3.6% of claimants on the scheme who had moved off benefits into sustained employment between June 2011 and July 2012 was a mark well below the target of 11.9% that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) expected to achieve, the MPs said.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21532191