Incentives

"It's not about maximising profits," said A4e's Mark Lovell, in that strange little piece on the BBC news. That's not a statement that any of the big players - Serco, Capita and G4S, as shown on "Britain's Secret Fat Cats" - would dream of making. It would be ludicrous. They are companies with shareholders, and maximising profits is their entire raison d'etre. They might express the intention to improve people's lives in the context of bidding for contracts; they could hardly do otherwise. But that is incidental. It's a business. And the government obviously acknowledges that. Grayling talked recently about providers being able to make "shedloads" of money. And now Freud has spelled out the scale of those payments. Providers will get between £4,000 and £14,000 for each client who secures work. The higher amounts are for outcomes for people who have been out of work for longest and are regarded as "hardest to help" - and who stay in work for two years. Freud is explicit that it's these incentives which will make the Work Programme successful. The profit motive rules.

So is A4e any different from its competitors?

One obvious point of difference is in the amount of publicity the firms seek. In the case of Serco et al that's nil. They don't need it, and don't get it. That's why their dominance has crept up on people. But for A4e, or at least for its boss, publicity is an essential strategy. There are a few signs, however, that this hunger for the limelight may be counter-productive. The words, "Anybody but A4e" have been uttered by people in local councils.