The cabinet has dropped plans to investigate merging the state job centre UVW with the social insurance bank SVB as an efficiency measure, social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher told MPs on Wednesday.

‘The focus now should be the human side and helping people to find work, not a megalomaniac merger,’ Asscher said.

Both bodies pay social benefits, serve a similar section of the population and both have similar working practices, making a merger a viable option, civil servants said in January.

The SVB is currently responsible for paying 3.3 million state pensions plus child benefits, widows and orphans benefits and personal care budgets for people with a handicap. The UWV pays 1.4 million people jobless, incapacity and sickness benefits.

Both organisations have also run into problems with IT systems, poor complaints procedures and bad management over the past year.