The young people in the studio discussion are not happy with the attitude of the Jobcentres. They talk about the demoralising effect of sending off hundreds of applications with no result. Chris Grayling talks about the government's work experience scheme, but the young people are not impressed. A young man who talks about the problems of expecting people to live on apprenticeship money when they don't have parents to depend on - he is ignored. Paxman talks about the effects of immigration. David Milliband favours the previous government's Future Jobs Fund, and a guarantee of a job. One man says work trials don't lead to jobs, but Grayling says that more than half do get jobs. He says that the WP is the answer to everything. It will match individuals to the vacancies. The discussion goes on, but gets nowhere.
The spat between the voluntary sector and the WP providers goes on. The Third Sector website expands on the story that A4e asked a local volunteer centre to provide people to work with their clients on CVs. It turns out that it was the Oxford A4e which asked for volunteers with good IT skills and a lot of patience. The volunteer centre refused because, without payment, it would be taking advantage of volunteers. The response of A4e's Nigel Lemmon is interesting: "We are investigating these allegations thoroughly. We only work with volunteer agencies where they are happy to work with us to support our customers back into work – improving the lives of those individuals and benefiting their communities." Dan Sumners of Volunteering England said that it was potentially exploitation to expect volunteers to help to deliver a service for a profit-making company. Yet there are voluntary sector organisations contracted to A4e and the others. So it apparently okay, as Lemmon suggests, for volunteers to be used if the organisation is getting paid.
