Preferred bidder - but A4e didn't get the contract

Back in April we reported that the Exaro website was saying that A4e was the preferred bidder for the Home Office's contract to run the Equalities and Human Rights Commission helpline.  Given all that was going on at the time it was not surprising that the Daily Mail took up the story.  Well, Exaro now reveals that A4e hasn't got that contract, which has gone to an American company, Sitel, which has beaten the CAB as well as A4e.
It's difficult to know what was really going on here.  Exaro naturally wants to claim credit for its previous revelations.  "A spokeswoman for A4e claimed that it had never been the preferred bidder and so did not really lose the contract, saying that the award process 'was discontinued earlier this year and we understand that a revised contract award procedure was launched. A4e did not enter this revised procurement process.'"  But Exaro claims that the EHRC has confirmed that A4e had been the preferred bidder originally.  Who knows?  Perhaps the Home Office decided to scrap the tendering process when the storm broke, and re-opened it after advising A4e not to bother.  Does this tell us anything about future contracts?  probably not.
Mark Serwotka, leader of the PCS union, is glad that A4e lost out, but doesn't want the helpline privatised at all.

Could this be the start?

Patrick Butler of the Guardian reports an interesting development in the outsourcing business - A4e's failure to get a contract.  The contracts are for assessing people's eligibility for Personal Independence Payments, which will replace DLA.  Ten companies have been shortlisted, including all the usual suspects - G4S, Serco, Atos, Ingeus etc.  But not A4e, who did put in a bid.  To have shortlisted A4e would have meant provoking howls of protest, because they are still under investigation.  We are still waiting to hear about that contract for the EHRC helpline.  Exaro broke the story that A4e had got the contract; the government denied it.  But we still haven't heard who has got it.  Not including A4e in the latest contracts sets a significant precedent.  When they are exonerated will they be back in the mix?  Or is this the start of the decline of the company?


It must be galling for Emma Harrison to see her former employee Hayley Taylor continuing to pull in the dosh.  She has a new American series on More4 tonight.  The Liverpool Echo sounds less than thrilled at the prospect. 

Reputations

The Daily Mail has "updated" its article about A4e being the preferred bidder for the EHRC helpline contract.  The amendment seems to consist of the insertion of: "A Home Office spokesman said: ‘A4e have no contracts with the Home Office or its executive agencies.  The procurement process for the Equality Advisory and Support service is ongoing and A4e have not been made the preferred bidder for this contract.’"  So the Home Office is denying the whole story.  It will be interesting to see what happens in the end.    
At the same time a Labour MP, Bill Esterson, has used his own website to call A4e "a Victorian workhouse scam".  His constituent, 50-year-old Philip Hammond, has been with A4e for 14 months.  He says: "A4e is bullying people at a time when they need support. They run a campaign of intimidation and undermine any self confidence you may have in yourself."  He is particularly incensed by the 50-page contract people have to sign which gives A4e the right to monitor them for two years.  He regards this as forcing people to sign away their human rights.  The MP supports all this.  
Okay, this is politics, and somewhat over the top.  But an article in the Telegraph yesterday shows that the government is squirming about the whole subject of fraud in the W2W field.  Margaret Hodge, chair of the PAC, is pursuing the fact that Cameron had announced that there had been 125 cases of "alleged wrongdoing".  Only 11 of those related to A4e.  She wants the details of the others disclosed, and a Tory MP has supported her.  Chris Grayling has said that most of the 125 cases were not really fraud, but a few of them were down to "employee malpractice".  The DWP is still deciding whether to publish the details.  Meanwhile, reports the Telegraph, "the National Audit Office is conducting an internal inquiry into the DWP’s approach to investigating allegations of fraud across providers in the back-to-work sector.  The findings of that inquiry will feed into a PAC evidence session on May 23."

It's against this background that A4e's new PR people are trying to rehabilitate the company's reputation.  I suspect it won't be about planting more of the good news stories in the local press.  George Bridges and his colleagues from Quiller Consultants are more likely to be lobbying politicians.  Disclosures of wrongdoing by other companies are helpful.

Home Office lines up A4e for major new contract

That's the headline of a story broken by the Exaro site.  They say: "Ministers have made the firm [A4e] ......... the preferred bidder to take over the sensitive Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) helpline to advise people of their rights in discrimination cases."  A4e is preferred over the CAB, Vertex and Sitel.  It's a government decision to privatise the helpline, because it was costing £2.1m a year.  There will inevitably be staff lay-offs.  A4e is saying simply that nothing has been concluded yet.

What made A4e's bid so attractive, one wonders.  Perhaps there was the fact that they already run the Money Advice helpline.  Perhaps they were the cheapest.  But it was always going to happen.  Despite the calls for suspension of contracts and the ongoing audit of contracts (Wales, by the way, has already completed an audit and found nothing wrong), there is no legal way at the moment to deny A4e contracts just because they are A4e.