Emma gets the Daily Mail treatment

The unemployed are used to it.  Being demonised by the Daily Mail is something you have to put up with if you're out of work.  But today the paper turns its fire on Emma Harrison, following the Public Accounts Committee hearing.   "Fury as families tsar gets £8.6m in one year (and the bulk of it comes from taxpayers)" is the headline.  And the focus is on money.  She "pocketed £8.6m", which was up 300 per cent on the year before".  Margaret Hodge is quoted as saying it's an outrage.  There's an insert on Thornbridge Hall, her home, and we're told that, "She is now worth an estimated £70million, putting her at 968 on The Sunday Times rich list. A4e is worth £80million, with her stake put at £68million."  There is then a write-up of the committee's proceedings, and the response of Andrew Dutton.  The article has no less than 4 photos of Ms Harrison, a signal that they're targeting an individual.  Last night A4e put out a statement saying that their performance was better than the industry average.  


I doubt it will bother Harrison too much.  Two days ago she was at a charity reception at 10 Downing Street.  And don't they say, "all publicity is good publicity"?

A4e's "abysmal" record

The Public Accounts Committee yesterday launched a blistering attack on A4e during a session on the introduction of the Work Programme.  (See the Guardian)  Why, the committee wanted to know, did a company with such an "abysmal" record get contracts.  Andrew Dutton, A4e's CEO, had to respond to questioning about the company's UK turnover last year of £160m - £180m, all of it from government contracts, and the £11m it paid out in dividends, 87% of which went to Emma Harrison.  The committee chair, Margaret Hodge (a hero of mine despite her politics) ensured that they "spent some time trying to establish where money paid to A4e to deliver government contracts ended up."  She told Dutton, "You're one of the first examples we have had of a company which is entirely dependent on public contracts for your existence. We, in terms of looking for value for money, have an interest in following the pound. All your business is public contracts. You and Emma Harrison have to accept that there will be a different interest in the remuneration and profits made because the profits you make come from the taxes that ordinary, hard-working people pay."   The example of abysmal performance cited was the Pathways to Work programme, with 9% of clients got into work.


Several members of the committee expressed amazement that companies with such a poor record could get new contracts.  But the DWP's permanent secretary, Robert Devereux, confirmed what we have pointed out before - that they can't take past performance into account.  Lots of them had poor records (!)  And since some of the companies bidding were new entrants it wouldn't have been possible.


Fiona MacTaggart MP raised an interesting point about "job substitution" - "companies delivering the Work Programme, getting paid for pushing their clients into jobs that would otherwise have been filled by other jobseekers without the need for a third-party payment."  "In my constituency," she said, "a lot of people are being given work experience, unpaid, in retail, and then the retailers, I think, are being directly encouraged to employ people who have been given this one-month or two-, three-month interview process … and when they're offering jobs, a company like A4e, which operates in Slough, can say to Primark, if you want more of our free workers, I hope you are going to give our people 20-hour-week jobs. I'm sure it's not quite as overt as that, but I believe there is a risk of that happening."  All that Devereux could say to that was that a job was a good thing.  Another civil servant had a more wordy response but didn't answer the question.

One in seven

There was an interesting item on the BBC news today about the Work Programme.  Mark Easton went to Liverpool, to A4e's office there, after meeting Cheryl, a 21-year-old who has been out of work for a year and is willing to do anything.  He follows her as she goes to A4e for the first time.  And then we learn that only one in seven of their clients there have found work after seven months.  That's just over 14%.  And it must be around the "dead weight" figure, of those who would have found work anyway.  We meet Dave, middle-aged, long-term unemployed and very worried.  It's a buyer's market out there, with only the prospect of shift work at the Jacobs biscuit factory if he's lucky.  A4e's Steve Wright, looking nervous, says that it's a competitive market, and he can't control the labour market.  Back to Cheryl, who is doing the rounds with her CV.  But employers say they get hundreds of them.  Finally, A4e admits that they can't create jobs.  (What about those "hidden jobs" Emma Harrison is always on about?)


This wasn't a hatchet job on A4e.  But it's good to see the BBC looking carefully at the Work Programme and sympathetically at the unemployed.

Emma pops up again

Emma Harrison made another appearance on the BBC today, this time on Pienaar's Politics on 5 Live.  I haven't listened to it yet.  Fortunately the Scottish Sunday Express has provided a summary of Harrison's views under the headline "PM warned over vulnerable families".  She is described as "the woman appointed by David Cameron to get families back into work".   And she's worried that the £26,000 benefits cap could harm some families with a number of seriously disabled children, families in which the parents are the full-time carers and which would cost the state millions without that parental care.  Can't argue with that.  And she's right that it's a "populist movement" (though I wouldn't use that phrase) that wants to cap benefits.  However, it grates when she says, "I know families ...".  We are always told that it's Harrison's personal knowledge of the unemployed which informs her opinions.  And she seems to row back a bit at the end of the article:"Of course we should reform welfare. We should make it work for today. Somehow it has become possible for 120,000 families to live on benefits. Now within that group of families there might be a small percentage who will always have to live on benefits because of some very, very extreme circumstances." 
If Harrison is going to use her position to challenge the government's more extreme moves, we can only applaud.  But she will need to be armed with some genuine figures.  And she will need to face some informed questioning about A4e's activities.
Perhaps I'll grit my teeth and listen to the programme tomorrow.


Monday:  Harrison's remarks have made other newspapers, including the Financial Times, (which thinks her remarks will be a blow to David Cameron), the Mirror (which says that the "Jobs Tsar" has turned on the Tories) and a brief piece in the Scotsman.  

Work Programme - item on PM

The PM programme on Radio 4 tonight included an item on the Work Programme which managed to pack most of the issues into a few minutes.  The headline is that the ERSA (the trade body for welfare-to-work companies) has been allowed by the DWP to publish some rough and ready figures about how the WP is doing.  Among the first batch on the scheme, who started 6 months ago, 20% have found work.  But that figure disguises the fact that in two areas of the country, the South West and part of Scotland, the proportion is actually only 10%.  And in Liverpool A4e has managed only 10%.  No one mentioned the "dead weight" figure, the number which would be expected to get work without any intervention - but it's more than 10%.  One man interviewed (one of our correspondents, I believe) said that he had been on the New Deal programme, Flexible New Deal and now the Work Programme, all with A4e.  He felt he had received no help, and had had only one interview, which he got by his own efforts.
Barnsley Council is a WP contractor, and their spokesman was less reticent than other providers to talk about the problems.  There are simply not enough jobs.  Employers will not take the long-term unemployed, preferring immigrant workers if they can't get recently employed British workers.  Providers, he said, are picking the low-hanging fruit i.e. concentrating on those with the most recent work record.  
A voluntary organisation which has a proven track record in getting the hardest to help, like ex-offenders, into jobs said they were being asked by prime contractors to deliver programmes for them - for no payment.
Chris Grayling was briefly interviewed, and reminded me of someone who sticks his fingers in his ears and says, "La la la, can't hear you!".  It's in line with expectations, he said.  It's on track.  No, that's not over-optimistic.  You're just misusing figures.  The NAO report was wrong.  There will be no changes.

Workfare

The Guardian is keeping up its interest in the subject of workfare with an article on those firms which have taken people on placement - including Waterstones, which has decided to make its branch managers end the practice "as it did not want to encourage working without pay".  Other companies involved say that they can't give figures because the placements are arranged locally. One point raised by an anonymous member of Holland and Barrett's staff was that they believe the placements are destroying paid work.  "We have had a number of placements in our store and have noticed that the hours for part-time staff have been reduced. Staff are upset because we are all struggling to make ends meet," the employee said.  "The real benefactors of this scheme are the companies who receive millions of pounds worth of labour absolutely free of charge and the losers are the jobseekers who see potential jobs being filled by workfare placements for months at a time and the loyal part-timers who find their regular overtime hours savagely cut."  The article also updates us on Cait Reilly's action against the DWP.  Court papers have now been filed.  The DWP's defence is "that having benefits docked does not equate to forcing the unemployed to work."  "Where a person is required to perform a task and, if he or she does not do so, loses benefit, that is not forcing a person to work."  Well, yes.  Very interesting.


That appearance by Emma Harrison yesterday on The Daily Politics - I'm still wondering how and why she came to be there.  

Emma Harrison on the Daily Politics - again

The BBC's Daily Politics programme is going on at the moment, and the "guest of the day" is A4e's Emma Harrison.  She was introduced as if she had never been on the show before, but she's been on twice to my knowledge.  So, how is she doing?  Her first contribution was an intervention in a discussion on the Miliband brothers, though with nothing useful to say.


A report was cited that says that 4 out of 10 employers say they hire immigrants rather than British youngsters because the British lack the "soft skills" such as how to deal with customers.  Emma said that A4e teaches the soft skills, it's of prime importance.  She said that it was more of a London issue.  And her clients are getting and keeping jobs.


Now she's intervening in a discussion on French politics!  Neil asks her to comment.  And now we're on to the Lib Dem away-day.  Why is Harrison on the programme at all?  She is asked to comment on what the journalist says about the Lib Dem agenda, and she says that they should ask what people want, represent the voice of the consumer; and "get in early with the SME stuff".


And that's it, programme over.  Harrison has had some completely painless exposure and unchallenged publicity for A4e.