Ok - so this is how it should have been done. There should have been no question that these schemes were not to be used to fill existing jobs, but were to achieve the dual aims of i) getting long term unemployed people back into the 'swing' of working for a living and ii) facilitating the creation of  'new' jobs within the employment pool.

The prospective candidate should have been set to work for the number of hours that equated to thier benefit payment payed at the rate of minimum wage. ie if the benefit payment was say £59 per week then they would work 59 divided by 6.1 (£6.10 per hour being the minimum wage) hours. ie About 9 and a half hours. The £59 would be payable by the benefits office to the employer to cover these hours. If the employer required more hours (up to the normal maximum limit) from the work-experiencee, then these would be payable by the employer also at the rate of minimum wage. The same tax and working conditions etc that apply to regular workers would apply to the experiencee, thus making the work as nere normal as that experienced by ordinary workers as possible. The employee would not be obligated to retain a work-experience worker on a fully employed basis after the six month period of the scheme, but would not be able to obtain a further experiencee for two years after the date of leaving of the first unless able to give good and sufficient reasons as to why the experiencee was not retained. In the event of the experiencee being retained as a fully paid staff member (the ideal situation) the employer would immediately if he or she chose, be able to retain the services of the next experiencee.

This is how it should have been done. Fair to the worker. More than fair to the employee. And good for the country to boot!