Financially viable?

Nobody seems to be asking at the moment whether the Work Programme is financially viable for the providers.  The Work and Pensions Committee has taken evidence from "users" and there is a focus on the voluntary sector and small organisations which have found that the programme is not working for them or for anyone else.  Charities which help the homeless are particularly concerned about the specific problems of their clients being ignored; WP providers not even asking whether someone is homeless.  Yet the charity Crisis says that it got two people into work separately from the WP but was contacted by a provider asking for details so that it could claim the outcomes.  Meanwhile the media are focussing on other groups such as the disabled.  I missed the Panorama programme, but I gather that A4e was just one of the providers that didn't come out of it very well.  The response of A4e, as usual, is to point to a success story.  Next Sunday morning at 11.00 Radio 5 Live is looking at self-employment and the WP.
But, as I said, nobody is asking whether the whole thing could founder on the fact that the providers can't afford to run it.  The government insisted from the outset that only the largest and most financially secure companies could be prime providers, and that drove some companies, such as Ingeus, to partner with companies which could guarantee their financial security.  A4e didn't do that.  Nonetheless, the DWP was surprised that some potential primes put in bids that even the government didn't think were viable.  It now appears that the attachment fee income was sufficient to keep the companies ticking over.  Maximus, for instance, said that it had broken even on the first year.  But A4e's accounts to March 2012 showed them in deep trouble, and apparently without the expectation that things would improve much.
So what would happen if a prime decided that it just couldn't afford to go on?  Would the business be transferred to another company - assuming anybody wanted it?  Would they have to pay a penalty for breach of contract?  Is the government busy renegotiating terms in order to save the skins of these companies?  If that happens, I suspect it will be slipped through without publicity.

Someone put a petition on the government's e-petition website asking for the abolition of "work for your benefit/workfare schemes in the UK".  The rest of it was eminently sensible, but unfortunately the DWP was able to seize on the description and deny that there was any such thing as workfare in this country (it's American) and equally no such thing as "work for your benefit" - it's all about support.  How lucky that they changed the title of Labour's pilot scheme from "Work for your Benefit" to "Mandatory Work Activity".  

The Work Programme proceeds

The publicity surrounding Emma Harrison and her project is over, and attention turns back to the Work Programme. A4e continues to generate PR for itself, helped by the government. The Oxford Mail published a touching story about Chris Grayling's visit to A4e in Oxford and how he heard how "Furniture maker Shane Clarke got a new job four hours after visiting a 'giant employment dating service' in Oxford." The article details several other people who found work quickly; but the manager at Oxford wouldn't give figures for just how many people had found jobs since June, because that was "commercially sensitive". And the government doesn't have to give those figures until next year. It's not all plain sailing. In Runcorn and Widnes, where the WP is run by Ingeus and A4e, there have been delays caused by "data security issues" with A4e and a higher number of starts than expected. The article concludes with the statement that "So far 31 jobseekers have been seen (by A4e) but only 22% are considered ready for the workplace." This notion of "job-ready" appears to be common to all the providers, and up to a point it's sensible. But it does brand a huge number of people as not job-ready without detailing why.

Much has been made of the position of the voluntary sector (or Third Sector as some organisations prefer to be known) in the WP. Their involvement was guaranteed. Many were not enthusiastic, but needed the funding that sub-contracts could give them, and didn't want to see their work taken over by someone else. Now, various groups are feeling let down, with the work not materialising. One charity, Crisis, is particularly unhappy. Its Welfare Network Manager writes that "The reality of the Work Programme is proving to be quite different from what the government promised." He (or she) doesn't specify which prime they've been dealing with, but as well as getting much less than they believe is necessary to support a homeless person into employment but, "In addition, one contracter would only pay us for engaging with a client and job entry (the hard and expensive bit) whilst they would then themselves support the client for the year in work (the easy bit with the highest payment from DWP). There were also requests that we work with their clients using our own funding streams - with no financial reward for doing so."

The BBC is running a programme on Radio 4 next Thursday at 8.00 pm on the Work Programme. There's no indication of what line they're going to take. It can only be anecdotal. Let's hope it's fair.