Mark Lovell v. Patrick Butler

A4e's Mark Lovell has responded to the criticisms made by Patrick Butler of the Guardian in his piece The Work Programme: not working for young people. Butler had cited the case of a charity, New Deal of the Mind, which was signed up as a sub-contractor of A4e but had yet to receive any referrals. Lovell now uses the Huffington Post website to answer him and give us The Facts Behind the Work Programme. It's a long piece, but what it seems to boil down to is that they couldn't predict the numbers, it's taking a long time to set up, but the referrals will come. He also gives us his view on tacking youth unemployment - refer young people to the Work Programme sooner.

But Butler has moved on, picking up the story about charities being exploited by Work Programme providers. He has spoken to some of these voluntary organisations, and quotes Chris Grayling's insistence that the primes shouldn't be doing this. Butler wants contact with charities which believe they're being exploited and people who have been "covertly" referred to volunteer centres.