Yet more publicity

As if the interview in the Guardian wasn't enough for one day, Emma Harrison appeared on the BBC news this evening. Stephanie Flanders did a report on the financial mess in the country, and pointed to A4e as one company which had "thrived under Labour" and had now "gone global". There was a brief appearance from Harrison, naturally chirpy, saying that they are bringing all the tax revenues back to the UK, and that has to be a good thing.

One would love to see Flanders, a genuine economics and business expert, do a proper interview with Ms Harrison. She could ask about the failure of the 2006-2009 contracts to deliver the goods; and she could probe the cost to the taxpayer of each job outcome under FND, and whether it could be done better and more cheaply. But that kind of scrutiny isn't on the agenda of the media at the moment.

Even the Guardian!

When even the Guardian joins the fan club one despairs of journalism altogether. Today it carries a long piece by its economics reporter, Katie Allen, entitled "Recruitment boss feels the benefits of getting unemployed back to work" which is flawed from the start, describing A4e as an employment agency.

It is a long interview with Emma Harrison, reporting uncritically her ideas and attitudes. FND is described, and the reporter tentatively raises the possibility that it "encourages agencies to work with the most promising cases". Not so, says Harrison, who "insists A4e will work with anyone who turns up and takes part, and that there is no cherry-picking. Rather it is about leaving behind the old government contractors' culture of box ticking and instead focusing on securing the right job – one that will last." We learn of a great idea from A4e. "One of A4e's ways of rebuilding battered self-esteem is through a new project called People Helping People. It came about when a disgruntled, degree-qualified customer wrote to Harrison to complain he had been asked to help another with their CV. Harrison replied: "Isn't it wonderful you are able to help other people." Then she asked her staff to get participants to help each other based on their talents. "In the very act of doing something your self-worth is boosted. You don't need self-esteem classes. It's really simple and not fanciful philosophies."" [Fact: all providers have always used clients to help other clients, partly because it gives the better-qualified clients something to do, and partly because it helps to make up for staff shortages.]

The interview continues in the same unquestioning way. Harrison is "not political" and has worked with Conservative and Labour governments. [Does Allen know about David Blunkett's role with A4e?] The scope of A4e's ambition is accepted as sensible. "She wants to be allowed to help whole families, as the company does in Germany. Currently, getting one member a job can cut payouts – such as housing benefit – to the rest of the family, so there is less incentive to take that work. "When you have got intergenerational unemployment, the whole family unemployed and you are working with just one person, everything you do can be undermined by the family when they get home that night," explains Harrison." What "helping whole families" actually implies is not examined. Nor are the implications of Harrison's final ambition - "earlier help for the unemployed."

Ms Allen's interview has resulted in an article which is unworthy of a left-wing newspaper. She has failed to scrutinise the claims of her interviewee and written what is essentially a PR triumph for A4e.

Competing on compulsion

The leaders' debate tonight saw Cameron and Brown competing on how tough they are going to be on the unemployed. Brown said people will be forced to work. Cameron repeated what he has said many times about cutting off benefits for people who refuse a job. He also said that 3 years without benefit would be the penalty. Neither said where these compulsory jobs would come from. Clegg didn't compete with them. He said that people should have the incentive to work, and that raising the tax threshold would provide that incentive. Take your pick.

Emma's fans

Emma Harrison has a new fan - James Caan of Dragons' Den fame. In a piece in the Telegraph he says: "Recently, I was impressed to read about Emma Harrison - founder and chairman of A4e, the largest supplier of Government training contracts. The company works with public sector organisations to help train people and get them back into work. The last government's Flexible New Deal scheme targeted people who have been on jobseeker's allowance and out of work for more than a year by creating an individually tailored programme. Emma tells me that last year A4e assisted 17,681 people into work, helped 10,695 people gain a qualification, worked with 13,523 employers to improve the capacity of their workforce and helped build 79 thirdsector organisations." I'm intrigued by the verbs there - "assisted", "helped", "worked with"; and by the absence of the financial figures.

There were other fans tweeting from the Institute of Directors bash last night where Emma was a speaker. It seems that she gave good advice to the assembled business leaders, such as, "Do four new things every day" and "If you haven't got a vision, go and get one", for which they were no doubt grateful.

Gordon Brown and the unemployed

"But they shouldn’t be doing that, there is no life on the dole anymore for people, if you’re unemployed you’ve got to go back to work. At six months…" That's a quote from Gordon Brown's run-in with an elderly lady today. And, of course, it's gone unremarked. He didn't finish the sentence, but clearly the intention, if a Labour government is returned, is to copy the Tories' idea of Workfare - compulsory "training" or work-for-your-benefits, or even a cut-off point for benefits. There's nothing to distinguish Labour and the Conservatives, then, and whoever gets in we're going to see an increase in the resentment that so many unemployed people feel at being stigmatised. I see a growing number of posts and blogs on the internet from JSA claimants venting their anger. That is going to get worse.

There's a relevant article on CFE News saying that "Charity claims NEETs view employability courses with contempt".

"Barnardo’s Scotland director Martin Crewe claimed that young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) view courses designed to improve their job prospects with contempt. Mr Crewe stated that that was not what they wanted, and said: "What they want are real jobs and programmes that will get them employed - not a short-term placement which will leave them more or less back where they started. Sitting around in classrooms for long periods working on their CVs is not going to provide a major boost to the employability prospects of the young people we work with. They know it from day one and regard such schemes with contempt." He went on to say that the Barnardo's Works programme had got 80% of its young participants into sustained employment.

The Panorama Programme

The BBC having sorted out iplayer, I've now watched last night's programme about NEETs.

Back in 2007 four unemployed young men in Swindon, where there were plenty of jobs, were challenged to get work. This was a follow-up to see what has happened to them in the last three years. Digby Jones, former head of the CBI, had only a small role in the programme, but there were questions which could have been asked of him. We were told that he is "passionate about improving employment skills". But there was no mention of the fact that businesses have long since ceased to train their own employees. They decided a couple of decades ago that they would only take on people, ready qualified and experienced, off the shelf; the tax-payer has had to pick up the bill for training. Of the 4 young men, 2 got work through a work placement while on New Deal. Both are low-paid, low skills jobs; but no one would argue that this isn't a good outcome for them. Both had been employed in other jobs since 2007, but one lost his job when the company he worked for went out of business in the crash; the other resigned after 7 months. They are now seen as New Deal successes and are still in work.

The other two are still out of work. Tim had a job in a juice bar but lost it after 3 months for bad time-keeping. Ben got agency work at BMW and loved it, but was a casualty of the recession. He also had the prospect of a job through a New Deal placement, as a night porter in a hotel, but turned it down. The job went to another New Deal client after a work placement. At the end of the programme Ben was being interviewed by an FE college for an apprenticeship. Tim is doing a 3-month voluntary course to improve his employability. Both talked about the demoralisation of being unemployed. Jones had no sympathy. They were eminently employable, he said, telling them to get their hair cut, and trying to fire them up by humiliating them. Both Ben's parents and Jones said they were in favour of Workfare - force NEETs on to training or similar schemes or they forfeit their benefits. The punch line to the programme was the statement that each NEET will cost the tax-payer over £100k.

How you react to this programme will depend on your personal experience. What it highlighted for me was the lack of real skills training for young people. Schools have not engaged with vocational training enough, and the government has been concerned with getting 50% of kids to go to university and has ignored the rest.

The China strategy

There's an interesting article in the English online edition of the China People's Daily which asks whether it's too late for foreign companies wanting to enter the Chinese market. It's a massive market with 1.3 billion potential customers; but as China invests in, and develops, its own private sector, is there less scope for outsiders? The answer is yes-and-no; but "Roy Newey, group board director of A4e, a services business which helps people who are unemployed get back into work, is someone not daunted by the prospect of entering China. The Sheffield, UK-based operation is already in 11 international markets and is hoping to set up an operation in the country soon. "I have been on a China-British Business Council trade mission recently and I didn't get any sense among those on that trip that there was any lack of enthusiasm for doing business in China," he said. Newey believes the company provides the sort of specialized service for which there is a gap in the market. "We help people who are out of work get back into jobs and we believe we could play a role in China," he said."

I didn't see the Panorama programme last night, but will, I hope, watch it later today. However, it certainly angered someone who left a comment. I can't accept the comment because it's abusive, but he calls it "a thinly-disguised attempt to promote the workfare idea". It "ignores vast issues such as the likes of A4e" and there is no discussion of capitalism.

PS. The programme is listed on iplayer, but what is playing is actually an earlier programme on immigration. Is this another BBC foul-up?