Finding an addict a job costs taxpayer £12,000

Fewer than one in 10 of the heroin and crack users who joined the Progress2Work scheme both secured paid work and managed to stay in it for at least 13 weeks. At 13m in total, the scheme cost 11,600 for each user found a job in 2008/9.

An adult working full time for the minimum wage would earn about 12,000 a year.

The figures were revealed in a National Audit Office report into the 1.2bn of taxpayers' money spent every year to tackle Class A drug addiction.

It called for the Department for Work and Pensions to review Progress2Work to ensure better value for money.

The report also criticised the lack of a proper framework for measuring the success or failure of the Government's 10-year Drug Strategy. Barely one in 20 of the 195,000 drug addicts who entered drug treatment last year came out clean. A total of 9,300 addicts finished the 580m programme free of drugs in 2008/9.

A separate 150m anti-crime programme helped half of those addicts involved to reduce their criminal activity. But there was a "sharp increase" in offending after they finished treatment.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee,

said: "Progress has been made, but whether it has been worth the amount of money spent is open to question."