Petition

My attention has been drawn to a petition which has been accepted by the 10 Downing Street website, submitted by R Ravji. It can be found here and reads: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to call a Public Inquiry to establish whether paying private companies to reduce UK unemployment represents good value for the taxpayer?" Under "more details" he says, "Private companies like A4e have been paid millions of pounds of taxpayers money to run programs like New Deal (now replaced by Flexible New Deal) to help the unemployed find work. But these private companies only found employment for about 20% of particpants. And much of that employment was part-time and short term (less than 6 months) whch resulted in many of them claiming benefits again!"

There's little doubt what the response will be, but anything which encourages scrutiny is welcome.