Monday 29 October 2012

Emma again - and rewriting history

If Wednesday night's interview on Channel 4 News was a disaster for A4e owner Emma Harrison, she hasn't given up.  Yesterday she appeared in a filmed interview for the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire edition of the Sunday Politics on BBC TV.  You can find it here, 36 mins and 30 secs in.  The introduction managed to get the facts wrong.  She was said to have resigned after criticism of her success rate.  That was only part of it, of course.  It was the publicity about fraud which exercises Harrison.  "The newspaper headlines were so wrong and so inflammatory," she said.  The accusations were "proved not to be true".  Hang on.  There were instances of fraud by A4e staff, just as there were by staff of other w2w companies.  Their own 2009 internal report showed probable fraud.  And the Slough case goes back to court this Wednesday.  But if Harrison says something often enough it must be true.  She says that it took a lot of nerve to stand up to the bullies.  A brief clip of John Healey MP shows him referring to "huge personal payment" for Harrison, but that wasn't put to her.  Apropos the leaked numbers, we did learn something interesting.  She said they "aren't meaningful" because there's now 18 months worth of data.  Does this mean, as we suspected, that the long delay in publishing the figures was so that the DWP could put out 18 months worth rather than 12, because it's got a bit better?  The interview was heavily edited.  Back in the studio, there was a brief discussion between two MPs.  The Conservative, Craig Whittaker, stuck to the line that payment by results is the best model because if the companies don't succeed they don't get paid.  He doesn't appear to have considered what happens to the clients.  The Labour MP Fabian Hamilton said that he didn't like PBR when his own government introduced it, and thinks the fact that the owner of a company can take £8m out of it shows it isn't working.  He would like to see civil servants trained to do the job.
Whether this last few days has been part of a determined effort at a come-back by Emma Harrison is hard to tell.  I suspect the company would rather it wasn't.

12 comments:

  1. Watched the video,Fabian Hamilton MP came across with some good points,at least to understanding. Why have the results not been published? I have noticed that for the under 25 age group they are being pushed into Apprenticeships, this in itself is not a bad thing,but could tilt the numbers, employers are paid an amount almost equal to what it costs them to hire this group. Which brings up the question,will the Prime be paid for an outcome as most apprenticeships last just over 6 months and when the subsidy runs out will they be back on the Dole?

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  2. Right, you're obviously guilty of the same sort of propagandist agenda as a4e themselves. The last few comments I've made have been clean & to the point - yet you haven't published them.

    It won't surpise me if you don't publish this - in which case I'll be proved right.

    If you do, then kindly explain why my comments wern't published as they contained no insults.

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    Replies
    1. I know you don't get it, and you've just proved it.

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    2. When you say the Slough case is back in court on Wednesday does this mean that one or all of the individuals from A4e arrested earlier in the year on conspiracy to commit fraud have now been charged?

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    3. I just read somewhere that the next court date is 31 October.

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    4. Hmmm, calling yourself Doleite Vermin probably isn't a good place to start. ;)

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  3. Why is the work programme still here? its failed big time.

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  4. There is No proof that the Private Providers running The Work Programme have had any impact on people finding work, in fact Channel 4 News have figures that show it's failing to deliver even the absolute minimum of 5%.

    Actual figures to date 3.65% well below the minimum, let's see how the DWP try to justify and wriggle out of terminating The Work Programme Contracts in November when the DWP have to release the actual figures for how many people the Private Providers have helped back into work, this should be interesting as Iain Duncan Smith will have to appear live on the TV news programmes to do this and I suspect he will get a roasting just like Emma Harrison did.

    They should have left the Jobcentre Plus in charge, they did a much better job at finding people jobs than any Private Provider ever has or ever will.

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  5. Fabian Hamilton MP said that instead of outsourcing £5 million into the private sector via the Work Programme scheme, the DWP's own staff should be trained up so that they can do the W2W job instead. I couldn't agree with him more and some of the DWP's existing staff would not need much additional training for them to be able to do the job brilliantly well, plus those DWP staff wouldn't go around milking publicly-owned cash cows for their own private, personal gain.

    Doesn't Cemeron realise that he is making himself look just as dodgy as some of his disreputable mates, the longer he persists with this outsourcing nonsense?

    That said, though, Nick Buckles of G4S has shot up in my own estimation. The MPS and the media have had a really serious go at him but he has never once whinged in public that poor ickle diddums has been "bullied." If Nick Buckles has children, the world will never know whether another child asked a Buckles baby about visiting Father Buckles in prison etc.

    Nick Buckles is right. He's the boss so the buck stops with him and there's no point in whining about it.

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  6. If the fraud allegations were proved to be untrue, why has A4e not launched legal action against those responsible?

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    Replies
    1. Don't give them ideas Anonymous! They have plenty of dosh in their coffers already surely ..... ?

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  7. Work Programme Outcome results 27 November at 0930...

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