This is Matthew Hancock, the Conservative MP and member of the Public Accounts Committee, who insisted that the whistle-blowers' evidence on fraud in A4e and Working Links was not made public.(On the same day Hancock appeared on BBC's The Daily Politics. He was not asked about this, but did manage to quote the party line on how wonderful the Work Programme is.) The whistle-blowers worked with or for the two private companies. According to the Guardian, "One of the whistleblowers said: 'It has taken a lot for us to come and speak in public about what we see as fraud. We have been silenced.'" Two of the witnesses' evidence was previewed in the Guardian on Monday. One of them was "a senior figure in A4e's risk and audit department in 2011" and "claims there was evidence of fraudulent activity in many of the firm's offices." The paper reports, "During the public session held later, Labour MP Austin Mitchell called for an investigation into the claims made in private. He said: 'We have just sat through a long closed session which produced some fairly damning indictments of the structures and the practices in A4e and in Working Links and gave several indications of possible fraud.'" The Independent also reports the story: "Another [whistle-blower] said they believed that pressure had been applied to the Tory MPs by the Government to ensure that more damaging evidence about the fraud on the programmes was not placed in the public domain." So is this evidence going to be made public? Or do Hancock and his mates have a vested interest in making sure that it's kept secret?
The Public Accounts Committee heard evidence of fraud at A4e today - but in private. According to the Daily Mail, this followed a row between Labour and Conservative members of the committee. Three whistle-blowers handed over a "damning dossier". The Mail doesn't say whether the whistle-blowers were A4e staff. Apparently the secrecy was so that the evidence didn't interfere with a possible police investigation.Robert Devereux was back giving evidence; he's the permanent secretary at the DWP.He conceded that the evidence sounded damning, but much of it was to do with old programmes and couldn't happen now. That's all right then. We must wait for a fuller account of events (come on, Guardian) to find out the rest of what went on.
The Mail, naturally, has picked up the story about an A4e client in Bootle getting a job in a lap-dancing club.It's the perfect excuse for the Mail to publish a large picture of what looks to me more like pole-dancing (but what do I know?). And I begin to feel a little bit sorry for A4e. The Exaro account, picked up by the mainstream media, assumes that the client was sent to the club by A4e for a job.But it's more likely, surely, that a client found a job there off his or her own bat. And in that case, why shouldn't A4e claim the job outcome?
Are we going to see more prosecutions? Or was the point of the secret hearings that the government would prefer to just bury this?
The Exaro website has got hold of the leaked internal A4e report of 2009 which demonstrated that the company knew that more than a quarter of its job outcome claims were potentially fraudulent. This has already been publicised by the BBC's Paul Mason, but it's salutary to remind ourselves that Grayling claims that there was "no evidence of fraud" in A4e contracts. Exaro also has what it calls a "shock discovery" - an instance of this potential fraud in the report. "The Bootle office of A4e sent the job-seeker to work at ‘X In The City’, a Liverpool lap-dance club favoured by football stars." If you're not acquainted with what goes on in such places, we read that, "The bar advertises lap dances at £5 a time, and offers a ‘VIP’ deal in private rooms where a half-hour lap dance with champagne costs £50." The auditors found that "a jobseeker was working at the club for more than 16 hours a week for 13 weeks in 2009." But they couldn't verify the job placement because the club wasn't open during working hours! There will be some of you thinking, why not? It's a job. And actually, at the time no rules were being broken. But they wouldn't be allowed to do it now. Said the DWP, "The secretary of state, Chris Grayling, issued a ban on job centres carrying advertisements for jobs in sex clubs and sex shops. Therefore, we are hardly likely to sanction a job provider placing a person in a sex or lap-dance club. It would be banned."
The Guardian has revealed what is going to be told to the Public Accounts Committe tomorrow (Tuesday). Both A4e and Working Links employed investigators to look into financial discrepancies, and then refused to hold formal enquiries. "A senior figure in A4e's risk and audit department in 2011, claims there was evidence of fraudulent activity in many of the firm's offices. He says that, in two of A4e's offices, staff were caught with company stamps that could be used on paperwork to claim public money for placing people in jobs. Despite a formal investigation, A4e took no action, the witness claims." A4e has responded by saying that "the stamps were only used with the employers' full knowledge and consent, and that a stamp alone could not be used to validate claims." I'd like to know the details of that. But A4e is not going to be invited to the meeting to give evidence themselves, and they are very cross about that. "Wherever we have been given facts to support any previous allegations, we have looked into them and we have not found a single allegation of fraud that stands up." Can we mention their own 2009 internal report?
The ERSA (the trade body of the w2w providers) has put out a statement warning that the Work Programme is not likely to meet its targets. Hardly a surprise. But what's interesting is the way in which the various media reports of this spin the figures.
Take the version in the Financial Times. They report the ERSA saying that on average 22% of starters "have been placed into jobs". Round the country the rate ranges from 18% to 26%. But the signs are that a lot of the jobs are temporary. The Recruiter website reports the range but headlines it as "nearly a quarter". The Telegraph's version is that "a fifth" "have found jobs". But on Radio 4's PM programme Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA said it was "approaching one in four". Okay, you can say that it's a minor point. But none of the reports point out that more than that number would be expected to have found work without any intervention - the dead weight figure.
Radio 4 asked McHugh if the prime contractors were going to need to go to government for financial help; she dismissed the idea. But one small contractor, Groundwork Southwest, has gone into administration, and several charities have pulled out. The Work Programme isn't working. Even those who find work are likely to be in temporary or part-time jobs. Better than nothing for the clients, but useless to the providers.
For a little light relief, take a look at the latest post on Hayley Taylor's website and ask yourself if you would like this "Fairy Jobmother" to write your CV.
The Telegraph has an interview with Andrew Dutton, A4e's CEO. It gives him the opportunity for some PR for the company but leaves unanswered the really important questions.
On Monday, says the article "a group of MPs is due to question DWP ministers on their handling of fraud allegations across the welfare-to-work industry, not just at A4e, suggesting the problem runs deeper than one firm." Dutton wants to repair A4e's reputation and is keen to stress that "the issues we’ve faced are genuinely market issues – there’s been 126 investigations into the whole market. We’re not alone.” The estimated cost of all the fraud is £773,000 but A4e accounts for only 9% of that. "The silver lining, Dutton says, is that A4e now has a competitive advantage. 'My business has been completely audited. The other organisations can’t say that,' he says." Part of the PR operation is to invite MPs and "opinion formers" into A4e's local offices.
Reading thus far, one begins to wonder whether the writer of the article, Louisa Peacock, is ever going to challenge Dutton on the real issues. "A4e obtained jobs for 310,000 people last year," she says, "and it clearly wants to promote the figure, although Dutton does not say how many of those are still in work." Note the phrasing. Not "310,000 people got jobs". The credit is all A4e's. Some way after that we read, "Still, a damning report from the spending watchdog last week showed up to £1bn of taxpayers’ money was being spent on finding jobs for people who would have found work without help." Peacock doesn't use this to challenge Dutton's earlier statement (nor does she pick up on the nonsense in that sentence). Perhaps she only did the research afterwards. Towards the end she says, "As far as is possible, it is business as usual for A4e."
It's all very helpful for Dutton and the company he runs. But it leaves out of consideration the other allegations against A4e, about the way it treats its clients. Business as usual indeed.
PS. This article was put on the Telegraph's website at about 6.00 pm on Saturday. By 11.45 pm it had been shortened and retitled "A4e seeks details on 'secret' frauds". Interesting.
There's plenty of coverage of the removal of one of A4e's contracts today, but most of it just repeats the press release. We saw at Prime Minister's Questions how the government wants to spin the NAO report; Cameron focussed on how quickly the Work Programme had been got up and running. It's left to the Guardian and the Yorkshire Post to highlight a significant omission. You remember that leaked internal A4e report which showed how much probable and potential fraud was going on? It was important enough for the BBC to break its vow of silence on the A4e issue. But it wasn't, apparently, important enough for the DWP to want to look at it. They didn't ask for it. Margaret Hodge isn't happy about that, naturally, and wants a more complete investigation. It raises the question of what kind of investigation the DWP thought it was conducting. The phrases "whitewash" and "damage limitation" spring to mind.
Another major point in the National Audit Office report is reported in the Guardian. "... allegations against A4e represented just under 10% of cases where fraud was substantiated. Over 40 cases occurred in other back-to-work companies, representing total losses since 2006 of a quarter of a million pounds. Out of a total of 126 reported cases of potential fraud the DWP concluded that there was no case to answer in 75 cases. Of the remaining cases, the NAO report said, '24 were of false representation [fraud], 22 of non-compliance' and five were still under investigation. The total losses to fraud since 2006 averaged £129,000 a year, which it described as a 'small' loss in comparison to a total expenditure of £829m on employment schemes in 2011-2012 alone."
An unexpected advert on Twitter from Paul Lewis, who is one of the BBC's financial experts.
