Negativity

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could ever call anybody was a liar.  Even when they clearly were.  Even when it was Iain Duncan Smith.  But (I'm sorry, Mum) I have to say it.  Esther McVey lied today in the Mail and the Express.  Since the quote is the same in both I have to assume that it's her lie, not the papers'.  "‘I meet with thousands of young people a year and they all say the negative picture painted by opposition politicians about young people and their bleak future has a very negative effect on them."
You can imagine it.  She's got a captive audience of unemployed kids in a jobcentre or somewhere, and every single one of them says, "Well, it's Labour telling us how bad things are, and there's no future."  
You may say it was just exaggeration.  But what about the substance of this mendacious piece?  Try the Mail's lengthy version.  Count the number of assertions which are simply not true.  The Express resorts to quoting the Mail, but at least it gives Rachel Reeves the chance to describe the comments as "pathetic".
We could dismiss all this as tripe, and rather desperate tripe at that, were it not for a piece on the Huffington Post site which makes it look like part of a concerted effort directed by Lynton Crosby, the Tories' campaign guru.  We heard this week that self-employment is at its highest level since records began, and that of the 1.1 million people who have started a job since January 2008, two thirds are self-employed.  (The figures are on the BBC news site.)  Over the last year it's over half of new "jobs".  But all is wonderful according to scary Tory MP Matthew (call me Matt) Hancock.  "There are more jobs available than ever before in this country, the vast majority of the jobs are full-time contracts of employment, and there has also been a very strong growth in self-employment. " [my italics]  This is simply not true.  The article gives plenty of space to voices refuting Hancock's claims.
But it seems that the tactic is simple.  Get out there and lie.  Blame Labour.  Deny the figures.  Just lie.

Changes at A4e

We knew that various directors of A4e had come and gone, having done their stints on the board.  However, separately from that, Mark Lovell has gone.  His job was terminated at the end of May (yes, I know it's July now, but I've only just picked it up.)  He had been with A4e since the start in 1991, and there were those who said that he was the brains behind the business rather than Emma Harrison.  Lovell kept a low profile, in contrast to Ms Harrison, and I only remember seeing him on TV once.  He was Executive Chairman of A4e for over 22 years, but in September last year he stepped down and became a non exec director.  He's now become the principal of something called The Social Assistance Partnership.   So all the old guard has gone.

There could be some new business for A4e if the Conservatives win in 2015.  The "think tank" Policy Exchange, which is actually a Tory brand, wants to privatise jobcentres.  There's a useful article in the Belfast Telegraph, and another on the Huffington Post site.  The service would be split and the "employment services arm" privatised while the rest would be renamed Citizen Support.  It's inevitable that any service still in the public sector will be outsourced sharpish if the Tories get in.

The Richard Caseby spat

Another story you will have missed if you rely on the BBC.  I first came across it when the Guardian's Patrick Butler tweeted the link this morning to a "guest blog" piece on the Press Gazette site.  It's a nasty attack on the Guardian for what the author calls smears and inaccuracies about the DWP.  It's personal and vicious.  And it's written by Richard Caseby, who happens to be Director of Communications at the DWP.  And he also happens to be a former managing editor of the Sun and the Sunday Times, which explains the personal animosity.  But he's a civil servant now, so the abusive article is inexcusable.
Butler continued to post links which helped to explain the background.  Then the Huffington Post took up the story, giving the context.  Finally (perhaps) there came a masterly piece by the veteran journalist Michael White in the Guardian.  The attack on the Guardian was "reckless", he says, considering that he is a civil servant, and IDS should "have a quiet word with his pit-bull".
(I have to amend that last para.  It wasn't "finally"; there's another Guardian piece tonight.)
All this really does matter.  The DWP press office has long been a joke, and no wonder.  IDS has very successfully put the frighteners on the BBC, which now declines to report anything to do with his department.  Now Caseby is trying to bully one of the few sources of honest reporting left in the media.

UJM and slumming

I was composing a reflective piece on the last six years; but two news stories yesterday are more important.

First, of course, there's Universal Job Match.  It's not news to us, or to thousands of people, but because Frank Field MP has spoken out the media are taking notice.  There are articles in the Guardian, the Independent, the Mirror and the Huffington Post  which tell the story.  Channel 4 News are running a story on it, and I think the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine programme has already done a feature.  So, mercifully, this scandal is now out there, and there has to be action.  What the DWP should do (but won't, obviously) is to take the site down immediately.  They can't tinker with it because it's owned and run by a private company, so Monster should be sued for breach of contract.  If it's possible, revert to the old direct.gov site which compiled vacancies from all the jobcentres.  It worked.  If not possible, then chuck out the idea of a single site altogether.  Jobseekers should be immediately freed from the obligation to use UJM.

The second bit of news is horribly depressing.  The BBC have commissioned another entertainment series from the people who brought you Benefits Street, to be called Famous, Rich and Hungry.  Yes, we all have fond memories of a previous effort, Famous, Rich and Jobless, which gave A4e's Emma Harrison the chance to swan about looking as if she knew what she was doing.  For an opinion on the latest offering I can't do better than Tanya Gold in the Guardian.  

Just as the government has reverted to Victorian attitudes towards the poor, so have the rich reverted to a very Victorian practice - slumming.  It got going in the 1880s, particularly in the East End of London.  It was a form of tourism, with the wealthy going amongst the slums seeking excitement and illicit thrills.  Some went out of genuinely altruistic motives, to do good works, but for many it was just a fun night out.  So it is with the media today.  Such a pity that the BBC thinks that this sort of "entertainment" is appropriate.

Before these two stories broke, Frances Ryan wrote an excellent piece in the New Statesman.  The case she makes is strengthened today.

The future of JCP

You may have missed it.  It certainly wasn't well publicised.  But then the report into Jobcentre Plus by the Work & Pensions select committee wasn't going to excite the media.  You can read the full report and a good summary on parliament's own site.  The few news sites which did pick this up highlighted the judgement that jobcentres assess claimants "haphazardly" (BBC) and that "Jobcentre staff are sanctioning benefits claimants inappropriately for minor infringements" (the Independent).
One of the most important of its recommendations was that JCP should continue to be a public service, i.e. not outsourced.  The committee also picked up on the fact that its targets are focussed on getting people off benefits, rather than into work.  They recognise that the two aims are different, and the focus should be on helping claimants to find work, not pushing them off the books by means of sanctions or putting them on another benefit.  The jobcentres often don't know enough about the "barriers" which individuals face, such as homelessness.
The report is scathing about sanctions.  The committee wants an independent enquiry into the regime, as well as the urgent monitoring of the financial hardship they cause.  They say that data on the numbers "signposted" by JCP to food banks should be collected and published (Iain Duncan Smith has refused to do this).  And the stress on conditionality must be balanced by greater efforts to actually help and support people.
Finally, they point to the increasing work-load being pushed onto the jobcentres (including making people on in-work benefits sign on), with no indication of what extra resources will be put in to cope with it.
It's a good report.  What a pity that it will be ignored.

We've all noticed the rubbish uttered by the anonymous DWP spokeswoman (or, occasionally, spokesperson) in response to media stories.  None of the media ever name her, although they will all know who she is.  She is part of a sinister trend in the DWP, well covered by Simon Barrow on the Ekklesia website, for people who are paid to be neutral civil servants to, instead, play a party-political role in the way it churns out propaganda.  Since this is so obvious, there is no reason to maintain the anonymity.

Those getting by on £71 a week JSA will have been amused (or not) to read about the £75,000 of taxpayers' money spent on media training for Lord Freud and others at the DWP.  The Huffington Post lists what it calls "the 5 crassest statements made by ministers" at the DWP, to show how much they need this training.  Alternatively, of course, you could just sack them and hire somebody competent.

Iain Duncan Smith - true to form

I thought we might get an IDS-free day today, but still the media keep coming up with depressing pieces.  I've bookmarked so many that I can't possibly post links to them, and you wouldn't want to read them anyway.  When I listened to the interview yesterday on the Today programme, I was hoping that John Humphrys would challenge him over his misuse of figures - and he did.  But that brought the extraordinary conversation, recorded in the Huffington Post: 

  '"What they said was you can't absolutely prove that those two things are connected."  Challenged over the fact his statement was not supported by officials statistics published by his own department, Duncan Smith said: "Yes, but by the way, you can't disprove what I said either.  I believe that this to be right, I believe that we are already seeing people going back to work who were not going to go back to work," he said.  "I believe that this will show, as we move forward, that people who were not seeking work are now seeking work."'

Of course, lots of people picked that up and mocked it.  Another assertion, quickly picked up by the New Statesman, was that homelessness figures had "hardly moved".  Actually, homelessness in England is up by 27% since 2010.  The New Statesman published an excellent piece, "Five things Iain Duncan Smith doesn't want you to know about the benefit cap" - essential reading.
Something which went unchallenged was the assertion, or implication, that people can go out and get a job if they want one.
It was inevitable that the interview would result in a complaint from IDS about the BBC.  He said to Humphrys, "This is absurd. What you are doing, as always happens in the BBC, is seeking out lots of little cases from people who are politically motivated to say this is wrong.”
My final link is to a Steve Bell cartoon in the Guardian.

Labour had little to say.  And that's because they support the benefit cap, and know that a large majority of the electorate support it too.  No minds were changed yesterday, but what I found most worrying was that so many people on the ideological right were content to churn out statements which they know to be untrue or highly misleading.  
And the Tories feel that they're on a roll, and can put forward further "reforms".  We're hearing today about a reduction in the cap to £20k, if it's shown to "work"; stopping housing benefit to the under-25s; and denying housing to teenage single mothers.

  

More truth, more lies

Iain Duncan Smith has been taken to task by the official statistics watchdog over his claims that the £26,000 a year benefits cap spurred 8,000 unemployed people to find jobs.  Andrew Dilnot, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to the TUC (following a complaint from them) to say that he did not comply with the code of practice on the way ministers handled figures, and wanting assurance that he won't do it again.  It sounds mild enough, but the language is strong for that kind of official letter.  The Huffington Post has the full letter, and the Independent dissects it.  Channel 4 News' FactCheck has also described the situation.  They all point out that this isn't the first time that IDS has been officially rebuked for making false claims.  At last, this morning, the BBC has reported the story, talking briefly to MP Dame Anne Begg who was copied into the letter.  She talked about using figures to make a political point and referred to the false claims about 1 million people who were supposedly fit for work.
But "lies, damned lies and statistics" are the stuff of much modern journalism.  Ministers are fond of talking about "fraudanderror" (as if it was one word) costing vast amounts of money.  Left Foot Forward publishes the official figures from the DWP, which show that just 0.7% of total benefit expenditure (£1.2bn) is down to claimant fraud.  0.9% is due to claimant error, 0.4% to official error.  A poll carried out for the TUC shows that the public believes that the fraud figure is 27%.  Now, how could they get that false impression?  Could it be the result of disgusting "journalism" like that in the Express today?  Somebody called Martyn Brown writes an article headlined "Call for new blitz on benefits to cut £3.6bn fraud bill".  Hang on, where did that figure come from?  Oh yes, it's 3 years' worth.  And there's a great big photo of "benefit scrounger Mick Philpott" (who is referred to again at the end of the article as if he's typical).  The only reference to percentages in the piece is the fact that the figure for official error has fallen to 0.4%.  Brown dissects the fraud figures to show what huge amounts of money are involved, and drags in the odious Taxpayers' Alliance in support.  There's nothing in the piece which is actually false (I think) but it's pure propaganda, selective use of the figures to create a false impression.

Turning the tide?

Thanks to a correspondent for drawing my attention to this item on Channel 4 News tonight; I missed it.  It vindicates what many people have been saying, on this blog and elsewhere.  The Universal Jobmatch website is vulnerable to hackers stealing your personal data, simply because no one is checking whether the vacancies advertised are genuine.  And people are being told, by Jobcentre and Work Programme staff, that they were obliged to sign up when they're not.  A good bit of work by a group of "hackers" - though they didn't have to actually hack the site to expose its failures, just register as employers using clearly false details.

You will not have noticed any references to the Work Programme in all the discussion of the Chancellor's financial plans this week.  I wonder why that is.  But when you got over the blow about benefits effectively being cut, you may have noticed something of a backlash in the media.  Osborne began his attack with the usual reference to hard-working people going off to work in the morning while their neighbours, "living a life on benefits", slept in.  But the opposition and commentators were quick to point out that 60% of working age benefits go to people who are in work.  Not that that bothered Osborne, who talked about "fairness".  And it didn't bother the Express, which talked about "Britain's benefits free-for-all" and "state handouts", deliberately ignoring the truth (so what else is new?).  Now the Guardian has reported that Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, didn't like Osborne's rhetoric much.  "Cable ....  distanced himself from the way in which the chancellor had sold his squeeze on welfare benefits in his autumn statement, saying he identified with those claimants who resented being regarded as a scrounger. 'I think that kind of approach and language is completely wrong.  I made it fairly clear that that stuff about people being unemployed at home with the curtains drawn is not the way, certainly, I would have addressed it. I think most people out there are looking for work, most people in this country are very conscientious, and we should do what we can to support them.'"  Good.  It needs more people to say that.  The government is playing a game with the Labour party by introducing legislation on this below-inflation rise in benefits, daring them to oppose it.  Maybe they'll have the courage to do so.

The Huffington Post has published an interesting article headed "Work Programme increases hardship and makes little difference to compliance".  At last, some common sense.

So are we beginning to see just a glimmer of the turning of the tide?  Maybe not.  But we live in hope.

Conscious Capitalism

The voracious appetite for publicity that is characteristic of A4e and Emma Harrison sometimes appears ridiculous. But it does have an effect. They convince not only themselves but others who accept it all without question. Take, for instance, an article on the Huffington Post. The author, American Margaret Heffernan, came to the UK. "Our trip focused on companies that are good for people, the planet and profits. This is also variously called Conscious Capitalism or social entrepreneurship". And guess what she found? Her nine examples include Jamie Oliver's 15, Divine chocolate and, yes, A4e, which is, she says, "working with insane dedication to prove that everyone is employable if you take enough time and give enough attention. The unbelievable energy of A4E employees also testifies to how much difference a sense of purpose can make. You don't have to pay a fortune to get great performance from your people." Heffernan cites these companies as examples of greed being "supplanted by purpose". Which proves that the propaganda works.

But it's lost on the people in Edinburgh who are having a struggle with A4e. A group called Edinburgh Claimants supports people who have serious problems with officialdom. They have won the right to provide a representative to accompany claimants in interviews at the Jobcentre, with Atos, the local council, and even at two of the welfare-to-work providers in the area, Ingeus and JHP. But A4e won't co-operate. They refuse to have representatives there and sanction people if they try to insist. You can read the full story on http://www.edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk/. Why? What do they want to hide? The Edinburgh group think that it's a matter of human rights, and I'm inclined to agree. I'm following this story with interest. Perhaps A4e are only practising "conscious capitalism".