Wednesday 24 July 2013

Burying bad news

The birth of the Windsor baby, and the fact that MPs and their journalist mates are all on holiday, meant that a significant news story was effectively buried.  The papers which did pick it up are a bit confused, and no wonder.  Try the Guardian.  "Atos reports found 'unacceptably poor'".  It's the quality of the written reports which the Atos people make which has not come up to scratch, not, the DWP insists, the validity of the verdicts.  Even so, they are bringing in "additional providers" from next year to work alongside Atos in order to speed things up.  It is really not clear what deficiencies the DWP is admitting to.  The Mirror says, "Atos rapped over wrongly passing fit for work up to 41% of claimants", and that the DWP was "told to act because of deep concerns about Atos at No 10".  That doesn't seem quite true, but who knows?  And what penalty has Atos actually paid?
Another little-reported failure is that of the Youth Contract, the wage incentive scheme which was supposed to help 160,000 young people into work over three years.  In its first year it helped just 4,700.  The Guardian and the Financial Times both analyse the figures.  But unless you read these papers you won't have heard any of this.  Is the timing accidental?

14 comments:

  1. What has happened to ATOS? The CEO received a £280k raise on top of his salary and bonus.

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  2. As a long term almost finished with the WP,I find the similarities between ATOS and the WP amazing,payment for failure.I recently had my signing on day and asked about post WP training and was stunned that nothing is in place as of yet,but they expected to contract the training out in the near future,great to who? WP main Providers are the preferred bidders,but they will be able to subcontract it out...Why does this sound like the WP 2.0?,they have not delivered training over the last 2 years. Will the same happen to ATOS?

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    1. ATOS are paid around 100 million pounds a year - wonder how much has been saved from their work. Their contract expires in August 2015. PS According to The Big Issue G4S may be bidding for a BBC security contract.

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  3. Look what else 'they' buried recently:


    State pension under threat as ministers told it should be on list for cuts
    FURY ERUPTED last night at plans to target the state pension in a bid to tackle Britain’s rising welfare bill.
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/retirement/410364/State-pension-under-threat-as-ministers-told-it-should-be-on-list-for-cuts

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    1. The One True Elg24 July 2013 at 08:47

      Pensions budget is massive and it's increasing well above inflation. Seeing as most of the rise in Welfare is down to Tax Credits and Pensions, it's only reasonable Pensions shares the pain.

      Even if it's ignored now, someone in the next parliament and definitely by the one after that will need to deal with the Pensions situation because it's growing well above inflation and will constantly outstrip our ability to pay for it without constant austerity in the wider budget.

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  4. I can see why the Youth Contract might work. I think there is a similar scheme for the disabled. But don't they prejudice against the long-term unemployed? I have also noticed more jobs being put up as apprenticeships. It is becoming harder and harder to find work if you have been out of work for a while. Which is why the Tories are trying to find ways of kicking them off benefits.

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    1. I am disabled and I am not aware of any similar scheme for the disabled. This does not mean no such scheme exists. I think part of the problem is poor communication.

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  5. According to The Gaurdian article "more than 4,690" people had been recruited via The Youth Contract. Why couldn't they say exactly how many?

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  6. The DWP figures have been rounded up / down to the nearest 10. Nothing unusual about that, although with such small numbers it does mean the actual number could be slightly higher or slightly lower, as the rounding has been done on a month by month basis.

    In terms of what, if anything, is wrong with it, having compared the Youth Contract to the Future Jobs Fund in an earlier post, it occurred to me that I'd omitted to mention a key factor. The FJF was specifically designed to create new (albeit potentially fixed-term) positions. The YC wage incentive on the other hand was deliberately set low enough to not create jobs, but would encourage employers to reallocate jobs from applicants aged >25 in favour of younger people. Zero sum - put older job seekers at a disadvantage in the hope that younger people avoid the scarring effects of long-term unemployment at an early age.

    What the results so far seem to suggest is that weighing the assumed positives of experienced job applicants against a cash payment for hiring younger people, employers still prefer the former. It's not surprising - the methodology behind the £2275 figure seems to have been little more than throwing a dart at the wall.

    Considering various interventions of this sort, what seems clear is that there's a degree of resistance and / or suspicion that hinders take-up, unless the amount on offer is quite substantial and employers are targeted carefully. The Labour government was concerned with EU rules on state aid and targeted VCSE employers and local authorities, who made good use of the FJF. The current government (with regard to this and other things) don't seem so concerned about involving the private sector - and thinking of specific exemptions around some aspects of de minimis, they're probably right and the previous government was possibly over-cautious.

    To summarise, that's a long-winded way of saying that the main problems are the size of the cash incentive, and the ideological assumption that using government money to create jobs is less desirable than trying (and largely failing) to persuade employers to favour young people to the detriment over those aged 25 plus.

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  7. It seems that A4E and the rest of the Providers are being very quiet,no press releases,not even on their Websites or Facebook pages.

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    1. A4e and the other WP providers have no need to comment on this - it doesn't concern them.

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    2. The Youth Contract has an employer grant of £2,275 but not straight away - it can be 26 weeks later. The job need only be for 26 weeks too so maybe people go for Apprenticeships which also offer a grant, £1,500 or £3,000 if in London.

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    3. Atos Healthcare's annual contract is 100 million whilst the cost of Appeals is 60 million. Youth unemployment is estimated to cost 4.7 billion a year!

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