Today is Pancake Day, but long before it was called that it was Shrove Tuesday. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, when people would fast, so on the Tuesday they confessed their sins and were "shriven" - forgiven by the priest. Today, then, is a day for confessions.
Why am I telling you this? Well, partly because I'm getting a bit bored with the continuing saga of Emma Harrison's embarrassment; and partly because Harrison may feel that it's relevant.
The latest episode is another onslaught from the Daily Mail. "Jobless attending courses by 'back-to-work tsar paid £8m by the Government 'were ordered to sign blank timesheets'." One of the Public Accounts Committee members who questioned A4e's Andrew Dutton last week was Fiona Mactaggart MP. She happens to be the MP for the area including Slough, where police visited A4e's offices following fraud allegations. And Mactaggart has been compiling a dossier of reports about A4e from her own constituents. One accusation is that clients were made to sign blank timesheets. That shouldn't happen, obviously, and I'm not excusing it, but it can be done for convenience rather than fraud. More serious is the accusation that a client had to sign a blank review sheet. Others talked of not getting the training they were promised, of shambolic conditions and of inappropriate treatment. Some of this happened a while ago, and A4e are saying that it can't happen now. Mactaggart is handing the dossier to the head of the National Audit Office.
As I pointed out earlier today, this will not prevent A4e from bidding for new contracts.
It can't happen now.. Its happening in the one where i am sent. No training, you cant drop in for job search you have to have an appointment, no one is offered any training. Nothing much changes..
ReplyDeleteyou r very true seen such things very closely...no action taken after raising such issues in the so-caled feedback forums they hold once in a blue moon
DeleteNot sure where to post this. Newsnight this evening - “Tonight Liz MacKean has more on the row over the workfare scheme looking at how it impacts not just the unemployed, but also those already in employment then Jeremy Paxman interviewed a female Conservative MP whose name I didn't catch and three unemployed people. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/
ReplyDeleteI felt the item was a glorious opportunity missed I’m off to watch Apprentice USA shortly having moved on from potential X Factor stardom aspirations!
I saw it too, Simone. It was better than I feared. The MP was totally out of her depth, but resorted to the tactic of choice in this government, labelling her opponents as "socialists" (as if that was a dirty word).
DeleteHer tactic was solely to 'correct' the unemployed contributors that they were referring to the wrong scheme.
DeleteEven when they corrected her, she still clung to this false defence. The stench of desperation was palpable and i thought the unemployed chap with the glasses (sat in the middle) made his points clearly and well - especially as you could tell he was clearly passioonate about this issue (and rightly so).
These places are dreadful. I used to work for a similar welfare-to-work company and just wrote a blog post about if, if you're interested..
ReplyDeletehttp://elibloglondon.blogspot.com/2012/02/welfare-to-work-gravy-train.html