Proud to work?

The DWP Press Office has been infamous for a long time.  It's staffed by civil servants who are supposed to adhere to the Civil Service Code, which says that they should have "integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality".  But perhaps they're working under the direction of the DWP's Director of Communications, Richard Caseby, who appears to have no such scruples (he's a former managing editor of the Sun).  Back in January the Press Office put out a press release referring to "welfare hand-outs", a term the Daily Mail obligingly repeated.  Then last week came this:

There was no pretence that this was anything other than straight-forward propaganda.  Objective and impartial it was most certainly not.  But I bet the intern (unpaid?) who gets to do the graphics has fun.

Today they attempted a rather different Twitter campaign, one which the Press Office didn't invent but which has decidedly sinister overtones.  It's called "Proud to Work", and it seems to be the creation of the ERSA, the work programme providers' trade body - but clearly they are all working together with this.  The DWP re-tweeted the highly dubious statement that the "Work Programme will deliver £18bn to economy".  Immediately afterwards came re-tweets of stuff from Interserve, A4e and Working Links (not on this screen capture).

What I find most disturbing about this is the "proud to work" tag.  It's subtle.  It suggests that those who are not working are not proud, have no pride.  It suggests that unemployment is voluntary, the result of lack of self-respect.  Perhaps it suggests other things to you.

Is there anything that can be done about the DWP Press Office?  Not at this stage in the parliament, I think.  There doesn't seem to be any mechanism for opposition MPs to complain about it effectively.  What it proves, however, very clearly, is that this government, and Iain Duncan Smith in particular, work closely with the right-wing press to spread lies and damaging propaganda.  If they win in 2015, it will only get worse.

Figures

The latest batch of Work Programme statistics is due for release on Thursday, 26 September.  I don't expect anything startling.  And I don't expect the media to take an interest.  The significant numbers will be the outcomes for the long-term jobless, and the "sustainment" payments.  The latter will give an indication of whether providers can cope financially with the contracts.  Comparisons between providers also matter.  We can expect the headline, from both the DWP and the ERSA, to be raw numbers, which tell us nothing.

There's another important set of figures which the government has obviously decided to bury - the data on sanctions.  They were due out last May but the DWP waffled about quality issues with the data.  Then there were indications that the delay might be down to the hiatus caused by the high court ruling and the need to legalise what had been declared illegal.  Then there was a hint that an announcement would be made in August.  Still nothing.  But we do have an announcement that there will be "an independent review of benefit sanctions".  Don't get your hopes up.  This is only to look at the "clarity of information" given to JSA claimants about the process.  It's to be carried out by a think-tanker, a theorist called Matthew Oakley.  I wonder if he will talk to anyone who has been punished.  A comment by Mark Hoban is insulting: "It is important that Jobseekers know exactly what is expected of them when they apply for Jobseeker's Allowance, and that they risk having their benefits sanctioned if they fail to play by the rules." [My italics]  Perhaps it's a game to you, Mr Hoban, but not to those who suddenly find themselves penniless.  There is so much about this regime that should be examined by a qualified independent person.  He might, for instance, consider a story in Sunday's Observer which shows that one in three homeless people on JSA have been penalised, compared to about 3% of jobseekers overall.  But this review is simply a cosmetic exercise.

That last story, the Observer article, ends in the now familiar way, with a quote from that shadowy figure, the DWP spokesman.  This person always makes political statements of dubious accuracy, but is never named.  Is this a civil servant doing his master's bidding?  Or a political aide to whom IDS has passed the buck?  Either way, if the journalists can't get a comment directly from those responsible, i.e. the politicians, they should refuse to publish this anonymous nonsense.

Desperately spinning

Last night's BBC news item on the Work Programme figures was a response to the officially-sanctioned spin on the latest performance data, not to be released for another week.  This morning a few of the papers have picked up the ERSA's figures.  No one seems bothered that this is all authorised by the DWP, as with the first year's figures, to extract the best publicity and deflect attention from next week's reality.
It appears that the best that can be said is that around 27% of those who have started the WP have found work.  And it's better for the under-25s, at 40%.  But what does that mean?  These are not "sustained" jobs, the outcomes for which the providers get paid.  They could be very temporary jobs, even single shifts.  So the official figures are going to be much worse.
The scope for spin is immense.  The Independent, which has a thoughtful piece, still manages to say silly things like "321,000 (27 per cent) started a job after being found one."  They are unaware, apparently, that many of those jobs will owe nothing whatever to the WP provider; no one found them the job, they found it for themselves.  But the paper still goes for the downside of the figures - three quarters of people on the WP haven't started a job.
The Mirror, naturally, emphasises the negative, that 900,000 sent on the WP haven't started any work.  They end with a quote from A4e.  "A spokeswoman for A4e, one of the biggest welfare-to-work providers, insisted that the figures showed 'a marked improvement'.  'It is gaining momentum,' the spokeswoman added."
The Financial Times tries to be even-handed, suggesting that "the scheme may be starting to deliver results".  They quote Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA maintaining that "the improving economy and the fact that providers had simply got better at helping clients had contributed to the stronger performance".
So all we really know is that around 27% of WP clients have had some sort of job start; and that the figure is higher for the under-25s but much lower for those on ESA.  (Can someone remind me of the projected dead-weight figure for Year 2, please.)  It all sounds rather feeble.  Yet Iain Duncan Smith and his team are happy for this preliminary spinning to take place.  Perhaps we will now all ignore the true figures when they are released without fanfare next week.

Thanks to the Eye

The latest Private Eye has some interesting sidelights on the Work Programme and attendant issues.

• The first concerns those sanctions targets which the government so strenuously denies. Labour's Liam Byrne and his colleague in the Lords, Lord McKenzie, have made much of this, wanting an investigation. But the Eye reveals that in 2006 Labour had an explicit target of 6% sanctions, and when this came out the excuses were “spookily similar” to those given recently. They also point out that Freud, who has masterminded much of the current “reform”, was also advisor on welfare to Labour. No wonder Labour's opposition is so lame.
  
  
• FoI requests made by the Eye have also revealed how the government tried to massage the Work Programme figures before their release last year. Mark Hoban, employment minister, met Kirsty McHugh who is head of the ERSA, the trade body for companies like A4e, involved in the WP. “She told Hoban, 'On performance overall, I think it is really important that both the industry and the department are robust in terms of defending the Work Programme as much as we can.'” Hoban's response was that he was keen to put the ERSA's own figure of “200,000 job entries” out there because it would be “much more understandable to the media / public than discussion around Job Outcomes”. This was, of course, deliberately misleading, since the 200,000 figure means nothing without knowing the percentage figure for actual job outcomes. But Hoban and his masters obviously didn't want that to come out. There was a lot of discussion with the ERSA, not, apparently, about why they were doing so badly and what measures were going to be taken to improve the situation, but about how to spin the failure. The emails suggest that the DWP even considered ignoring the contractors' minimum performance levels completely, but McHugh thought they needed to be prepared for questions on it. She was right. The DWP press release did ignore the minimum performance levels, but the media went with it anyway. This hardly inspires confidence that effective measures to tackle the dismal performance of the WP providers are being taken. Indeed, the apparent vow of silence on the whole subject might be a sign that they hope we'll all forget about it – except for those obliged to take part in it, of course.
  
  
• Finally, the much unloved Universal Jobmatch. The last edition of Private Eye showed that many of the vacancies for carers were being advertised on the site at well below minimum wage when travel time was taken into account, and that the DWP was not interested in doing anything about this. Now they've turned their attention to the non-jobs (which many of our readers know only too well). They found adverts which turned out to come from outfits which demanded personal data but then never responded; simple data mining, in other words. And they chased down adverts for what are not real jobs but “multi-level marketing”, particularly from Kleeneze reps. Again, people were using UJM simply to garner contact details and make money out of desperate people. This isn't new. Such “opportunities” have been a familiar feature of job sites for years. But now that people can be punished for not pursuing them, it's only a matter of time before someone loses their benefits for refusing to join one of these pyramid selling schemes.

Radio 5 Live Investigates - the self-employment scam

The Radio 5 Live Investigates programme has tackled the Work Programme and its predecessors several times.  Today they were looking at reports that people are being pressured into declaring themselves self-employed simply to get an outcome for the providers, and on the promise that their benefits would actually be higher.  No providers were named, but by the end of the programme it was said that 10 different providers had been accused.
Did we learn anything?  A number of WP clients, two of them on ESA, told of being pressured from very early in their WP experience that they should go self-employed, not because they had any viable business in mind but because they could get more in benefits by claiming Working Tax Credits.  They were given totally inaccurate figures, according to Sue Royston of the CAB, and were being led into a very dangerous situation where the fact that they're not working the requisite number of hours results in a clawback of thousands of pounds.  People spoke about advisers being totally clueless and only driven by the need to get people signed off.  One WP client, an unemployed project manager, faced an "adviser" who didn't know what a project manager was and admitted she couldn't help him, but the office rang a bell, literally, whenever someone signed off.
Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA (the industry's trade body) said she was surprised.  She corrected some of the misinformation - the providers only get an outcome payment after 6 months, not immediately as had been said.  But there was no excuse for bad advice, and people should complain to the provider if they felt they had been wrongly advised.  The researcher was able to point out that people are frightened to complain, and would not use their real names on this programme.  McHugh was then guilty of what I'm seriously tempted to call a lie - that WP providers are not able to sanction anybody.
Mark Hoban wasn't available, and the DWP said that there were always payment checks and a complaints process.  Stephen Timms, for Labour, had nothing useful to say.
What came out of this investigation was that the taxpayer is being ripped off in at least two ways.  WP companies are claiming outcome payments they are not entitled to; and WTC is being paid falsely.  There's also the problem that the government is putting out false figures on jobs.

One thing that wasn't mentioned but which I'm wondering about; is agency work (which has always been regarded as casual work and so doesn't attract an outcome payment) being reclassified as self-employment? I know that supply teaching agencies have forced their clients to become self-employed, so shifting the costs of National Insurance and administration of tax onto the client.  The same seems to be true of nursing agencies.  Is it happening in other areas as well?  If so, it's another serious distortion of the figures.

The press we deserve?

It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep, so I'm checking the news feeds ahead of the release of the performance data at 9.30 am.  There's plenty of interpretation already.  But the prize must go to the Express: "Jobs scheme 'helps 20,000 a month'".  Yes, they've taken the ERSA's spin and published it as the facts, ignoring deliberately the reality that this is people who've found any sort of work, temporary, part-time, which got them off the books for a little while.  "Almost a third of those who started the Work Programme in June 2011 have been supported into a job so far, said the ERSA. More than 64,000 people found work under the programme in the three months to September, it was reported."  (The words "helps" and "supported" will startle many people who know that the providers had nothing to do with it.)  But this is what Mark Hoban and the government wanted, of course.  Don't bother with the facts - that the figures for sustained jobs are appalling - just spin dizzily so that Express readers get the propaganda.
The Independent goes with "Government's Work Programme only helps one person in three find a job".  They do report the ERSA's figures, but understand the spin.
The Guardian has published the full data which the private companies have put out and asked readers if they can do anything with it.  Good for them.
The Financial Times yesterday had access to the actual figures and reported that the best-performing company, Serco, earned nearly double what the worst-performing, Prospects, earned.
So as as we await the actual figures (and I hope I can get some sleep in before then) we can already see what the press are going to make of it.  Accurate reporting?  Some papers don't know what that means.

"Descending into chaos"

So says the Financial Times about the Work programme.  Mind you, they're quoting Labour's Liam Byrne.  But the verdict is based on a slump in the number of people being referred to the WP, down from 65,000 in February to 40,000 in August.  "Opinion is divided as to why," they say.  Some think that the pattern of employment is responsible, with fewer people being out of work for the 9 months stretch which would get them referred.  Certainly this would have an effect if there is a big increase in temporary jobs and unwanted part-time jobs.  Another view is that the Jobcentres have lost so many staff  that they are not able to keep up with the referrals.  Whatever the reason, it's "beginning to worry the market", says Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA.  Mark Hoban, the minister, isn't worried.  He says that referrals are higher than predicted when the companies bid for the contracts.  Byrne is pushing for publication of the performance data - and so are we all.

Slippery figures for the Work Programme

The ERSA (the trade body of the w2w providers) has put out a statement warning that the Work Programme is not likely to meet its targets.  Hardly a surprise.  But what's interesting is the way in which the various media reports of this spin the figures.

Take the version in the Financial Times.   They report the ERSA saying that on average 22% of starters "have been placed into jobs".  Round the country the rate ranges from 18% to 26%.  But the signs are that a lot of the jobs are temporary.  The Recruiter website reports the range but headlines it as "nearly a quarter".  The Telegraph's version is that "a fifth" "have found jobs".  But on Radio 4's PM programme Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA said it was "approaching one in four".  Okay, you can say that it's a minor point.  But none of the reports point out that more than that number would be expected to have found work without any intervention - the dead weight figure. 

Radio 4 asked McHugh if the prime contractors were going to need to go to government for financial help; she dismissed the idea.  But one small contractor, Groundwork Southwest, has gone into administration, and several charities have pulled out.  The Work Programme isn't working.  Even those who find work are likely to be in temporary or part-time jobs.  Better than nothing for the clients, but useless to the providers.

For a little light relief, take a look at the latest post on Hayley Taylor's website and ask yourself if you would like this "Fairy Jobmother" to write your CV.

Work Programme - item on PM

The PM programme on Radio 4 tonight included an item on the Work Programme which managed to pack most of the issues into a few minutes.  The headline is that the ERSA (the trade body for welfare-to-work companies) has been allowed by the DWP to publish some rough and ready figures about how the WP is doing.  Among the first batch on the scheme, who started 6 months ago, 20% have found work.  But that figure disguises the fact that in two areas of the country, the South West and part of Scotland, the proportion is actually only 10%.  And in Liverpool A4e has managed only 10%.  No one mentioned the "dead weight" figure, the number which would be expected to get work without any intervention - but it's more than 10%.  One man interviewed (one of our correspondents, I believe) said that he had been on the New Deal programme, Flexible New Deal and now the Work Programme, all with A4e.  He felt he had received no help, and had had only one interview, which he got by his own efforts.
Barnsley Council is a WP contractor, and their spokesman was less reticent than other providers to talk about the problems.  There are simply not enough jobs.  Employers will not take the long-term unemployed, preferring immigrant workers if they can't get recently employed British workers.  Providers, he said, are picking the low-hanging fruit i.e. concentrating on those with the most recent work record.  
A voluntary organisation which has a proven track record in getting the hardest to help, like ex-offenders, into jobs said they were being asked by prime contractors to deliver programmes for them - for no payment.
Chris Grayling was briefly interviewed, and reminded me of someone who sticks his fingers in his ears and says, "La la la, can't hear you!".  It's in line with expectations, he said.  It's on track.  No, that's not over-optimistic.  You're just misusing figures.  The NAO report was wrong.  There will be no changes.

File on Four

This Radio 4 programme tonight looked at what help is available for people looking for work, in view of the fact that unemployment is set to rise sharply. As is usual with the media, it lacked a historical perspective.

It started in the North East, where the loss of jobs in the steel industry has had knock-on effects. The programme followed a 42-year-old redundant professional to the Jobcentre. Here, it picked up the fact that most of the local job vacancies advertised are either not local at all or are entirely spurious. Figures for vacancies are being fiddled with "speculative" jobs. Zero hours jobs are still being advertised in disguised form, although outlawed. It was said that many employers will not advertise vacancies through the Jobcentres because they are seen as serving the bottom end of the skills market; and private recruitment agencies would object to losing upmarket vacancies to JCP. Jim Knight MP stated that JCP has the largest jobs database in Europe, and he's aware of the issues.

The programme visited a Jobcentre in Birmingham, where the manager is proud of the transformation the service has undergone. But a client, a former PR man, spoke of spending 3 or 4 hours a day looking for work and not getting any help or support. He found that other people were being offered training courses etc., but he wasn't. He wants to start his own business but nobody at the Jobcentre knew what help was available. He found out himself that there was a course of training. JCP, said the interviewer to the manager, has been criticised for being unresponsive to the needs of professionals. Things are getting better, said the manager - and then a Press Officer for the DWP intervened.

Consumer Focus has been equally critical of the service. The DWP produced a customer charter, but CF says that this has not improved things. Jim Knight said that JCP staff have been increased by 16,000 in the recession, but the system needs to adapt. A Professor Finn (an adviser) said that JCP has had to re-tool, but new services are fairly minimal. The government thinks people should be able to look after themselves in the early stages of unemployment.

The programme then turned to the rising numbers of long-term unemployed, and the fact that welfare-to-work is run by the private sector. It called FND the big brother of New Deal (and here the lack of a historical perspective was irritating). Payment by results means that much of the risk has been shifted onto providers; and managers on the ground have to make decisions about who to help. The report of the enquiry we reported on the other day was cited; it complained about the "creaming and parking" going on. This was linked to the numbers of people who had been shifted from Incapacity Benefit onto JSA. A Liberal Democrat member of the committee, Jenny Willott, said that because no one is close to hitting their targets the people who are most likely to find work are being pushed into the first job which comes up. She said that the DWP doesn't have a clue what is going on, and that a better breakdown of the figures is needed, and better oversight.

The ERSA (the trade body for the providers) declined to put anyone up for interview, but in a statement said that the providers wanted more money to help the most difficult cases. Jim Knight was not concerned about the lack of safeguards, and was happy with the customer charter. The Personalised Employment Programme will test a new model of payment. The programme concluded with a look at the policies of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, but both intend to adjust rather than scrap the private provider model. There is more pain to come, particularly as public sector jobs go.

All this makes an announcement by the DWP even more startling. Reported on the Indus Delta site, it says that they have reduced by half the numbers of people expected on the FND Phase 2 contracts, and has asked the bidders for their revised pricing proposals. No one can make out how they have arrived at these revised figures.