The next privatisation?

With nothing much happening as we wait for contract news, it occurs to me that the next step may well be the contracting-out of Jobcentre Plus. The JCP Support contracts would seem to pave the way for that. Any thoughts?

The Know Hope Roadshow

A tweet from A4e says: *In Scarbro' yesterday, one man told us how A4e had changed his life and one woman who had been in f/t work 12 months had bought 1st house."

I asked a contact in Hull to look in on the roadshow there today, and he has sent me the following email:

"They had a van in Victoria Square, an old Volkswagen camper van painted in the Know Hope branding. They weren't giving out leaflets, as far as I could see, they just wanted to engage people in conversation. They had two cameras set up on tripods - not sure why, but they seemed to be getting people to wear a Know Hope t-shirt and be photographed in it. The A4e logo was around, on the back of the van and on the team's jumpers, but it wasn't prominent. I would say that they are pushing the Know Hope branding, with A4e very much secondary. I didn't go up and talk to them, sorry. I don't look like a potential client so I didn't know what to say."

It certainly looks like they are trying to start FND as a new brand. Will it work?

Twittering A4e - and No (sorry, Know) Hope

If you look for Twitter feeds on A4e you'll get two kinds (see below) - tweets from disgruntled clients, and PR tweets from A4e itself. They've got a new one called A4eworks, where you can learn about the roadshow they're running to promote FND under the banner of Know Hope. They've gone from Rotherham (see the video here) to Middlesborough yesterday, Scarborough today, Hull tomorrow and Barnsley and Doncaster on Friday. You have to admire their courage (sort of). Of course, FND is going to be nothing like New Deal. "Flexible New Deal is a completely new approach, and it's just that - 'Flexible'. We know everyone is different and so the 'Flexible' part means that organisations like A4e are free to help you and your specific needs. Getting back into work through Flexible New Deal means the help you get is completely tailored to you and your individual circumstances. It's your own personal journey back to work." Etc. Read it all here and remember it.

I can't help thinking that the slogan Know Hope is a mistake!

PS. I apologise if I gave him the idea, but someone who calls himself highpark1 has just added his Hub pages as Twitter items. These are anti-A4e stories, all of them taken directly from other people's sites, without acknowledgement, let alone permission.

The Waiting Game

We're expecting important contract announcements shortly - the shortlist for FND phase 2 providers and the winners of the JCP Support and ESF contracts. This may well come in the middle of the Labour Party Conference. If anyone is tempted to ask why these programmes should not fall under the axe, given the need for huge public spending cuts that all the parties are telling us about, the answer will probably be that they are "helping the unemployed".

Meanwhile, A4e keeps the local press supplied with PR pieces. One, from Gateshead, tells us that A4e have teamed up with Remploy to put 11 disabled people into a work trial scheme. Hardly big news, you might think. And when you read the article it's clear that it's come straight from A4e. (And a PS - the identical article has just appeared on A4e's website.) The same can't be said of another piece from Barrow the other day which reported that A4e, along with other businesses, had been forced out of a building because the owners hadn't paid the electricity bill and the power was turned off. Not A4e's fault. But it did prompt the comment from a correspondent of mine about the lights going out for A4e.

Going to Conference?

If you're going to a party conference (if you're Labour or Conservative, at least) you will this year be able to attend "several events" hosted by A4e, they've announced on their website. A4e are "partnering" with the think tank Demos to talk about - you guessed it - welfare to work. At the Labour conference there's a fringe event, ‘Making Welfare to Work work in a recession’, at which both Yvette Cooper and Mark Lovell will speak. "A4e and Demos will also be hosting a roundtable centred around this theme with Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform." If you're thinking that it's a bit much for this company to be in cahoots with ministers - if you think it smacks of touting for business ......

But of course there may be a Conservative government soon, so A4e is hosting similar events at the Tory conference. There's ‘Smart citizens: advice in a world of personalised public services’, an A4e and Reform fringe event. Speaker:

Oliver Letwin MP, Chairman of the Policy Review and of the Conservative Research Department". And "A4e and Reform will also be hosting a roundtable discussing: ‘What role can the integration of welfare and skills provision play in tackling long-term unemployment?’ with Theresa May MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Shadow Minister for Women."

They don't seem to be bothering with the Liberal Democrat conference - no point, really.

A4e will certainly not be the only company using the party conferences as lobbying opportunities. Let's hope that party members are well informed.

Learning from Israel?

In Israel A4e is known as Amin. A group of British Labour MPs has been in Jerusalem looking at how they run Israel's welfare-to-work programme, says the Jerusalem Post. You may recall that A4e got the contract in Israel despite the fact that it was against British government policy but with official help. Read the details here. Now A4e's Rob Murdoch (the guy who did such a dismal job of defending the company on the Radio 5 Live programme) has been showing off A4e-Amin as a model for Britain to follow. And, ironically, the MPs seemed proud of the fact that A4e is a British company. ' "It was fascinating to see how welfare-to-work programs are being carried out in such a diverse society as Israel," added Andrew Gwynne MP, parliamentary chairman of Labor Friends of Israel. "And it's all built on a number of the initiatives first implemented by the Labor government in the UK." In addition to Gwynne, the group included MPs David Cairns, Jane Kennedy, Anne McGuire, Meg Munn, Jamie Reed, Derek Twigg and Malcolm Wicks.' Perhaps we should explain to them what the "Wisconsin model" actually means - making welfare benefits time-limited, tieing them to job-seeking activities, then throwing people into the gutter to be picked up by charities. Is that what these MPs envisage for Britain?

Don't mention New Deal

I caught a fascinating Radio 4 programme on Saturday morning. Called "Give us a Job", it was marking the centenary of the institution of Job Centres. They were called Labour Exchanges then, of course. You can hear it on iplayer. After looking at the history, Michael Portillo (yes, I know, but he's out of politics now) spoke to Mark Serwotka and then asked Yvette Cooper about the new Welfare Reform Bill. I waited, naturally, for any mention of the New Deal or Jobcentre Support contracts, but all we got were a couple of cliches about how the Bill was "to take forward more support" for people looking for work and, "We're a society that cares for people." Either the omission was deliberate, or it reflected the irrelevance of these hugely expensive contracts.

This morning the Guardian reports the results of a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses, called "The Jobcentre is not working". Again, there is absolutely nothing about New Deal and the private companies. All the burden of expectation is on Jobcentre Plus, despite the fact that the government is spending vast amounts of money on private companies like A4e to take on much of JCP's role. This is a curious situation, to say the least.

PS. The One Show tonight had a piece about youth unemployment, from Hull which has the highest incidence, and has for years had this dubious honour. The focus was the Young Person's Guarantee. Yvette Cooper was given a few brief lines to say; notably that any young person signing on today is guaranteed not to be signing on a year from now. What they're carefully not saying is that the jobs will be only temporary, and that many youngsters will get only "training". Again, the privatised New Deal situation is unmentioned. The real point of the piece, I felt, was that the only body actually doing something about youth unemployment is the local Council, which funds apprenticeships.

PPS. With all the current talk of cutting non-essential programmes, can we dare to hope that the decidedly non-essential FND contracts will be cut?