Plugging away

There's an interesting piece by Fiona MacTaggart MP on the Left Foot Forward website.  MacTaggart is the Labour MP for Slough, and a member of the Public Accounts Committee which tore into A4e recently.  She begins: "In politics often you plug away at an issue with no-one noticing, and then it becomes big news."  Yes, Fiona, I know the feeling.  She then says that over the last two years she has reported A4e to the National Auditor three times after complaints by constituents.  And it was in Slough that four former employees were arrested.  She outlines her concerns about the company:

• It cut its costs and provided a poor service
• It implied that it could offer skills training courses but failed to provide them
• It used unemployed people in unpaid roles in the company, and didn't give a job to any of them

We have a right, she says, to expect high standards from A4e in return for their high profits.

All true.   But something else worries me.  MacTaggart certainly isn't the only MP who has had complaints about A4e (and, I'm sure, about other providers).  There are a number of things MPs can do with such complaints.  They can i) ignore them; ii) pass them on to the relevant minister; iii) pass them to a civil servant in the relevant department or iv) pass them to the National Auditor because money is involved.  Whatever the various MPs did, the DWP would have been well aware of an accumulation of complaints; but nothing was done.  Undoubtedly, bland responses were given, assurances offered.  It's pure luck that MacTaggart was tenacious and well-placed.  Could we now see some other MPs coming forward with their own dossiers of complaints - and the replies they received?