Give them more money

You may remember that when Channel 4 News revealed A4e's current performance figures last Thursday, they rolled out Ian Mulheirn to say what he thought of them.  It didn't matter at the time who Ian Mulheirn is, but he pops up again today in the Guardian to give his take on what's wrong with the Work Programme.  It's a bizarre analysis, which concludes that providers should get more money and have less expected of them.  So who is this man who gets a newspaper article to air his views?


Mulheirn runs something called the Social Market Foundation - a think tank.  It proclaims itself to be "a leading cross-party think tank, developing innovative ideas across a broad range of economic and social policy.  We champion policy ideas which marry markets with social justice and take a pro-market rather than free-market approach. Our work is characterised by the belief that governments have an important role to play in correcting market failures and setting the framework within which markets can operate in a way that benefits individuals and society as a whole."  Which sounds nice and cuddly.  But with think tanks one should always follow the money.  Where does their funding come from?  They show it on their website.  The money comes from a variety of sources, but nearly half of it comes from private business, including Avanta and G4S.  


Mulheirn believes that the reason for the apparent failure of the WP is the state of the economy. The minimum performance targets are based on forecasts of growth done in 2010, but these have proved way too optimistic.  The providers can't control the labour market.  The solution, then, is to:
i) "tone down the proportion of payments made for achieving job outcomes. In the depths of recession, the priority must be to make sure jobseekers get the help they need. For that they need the money to provide it."
ii) "Second, it (the government) should reassess its expectations of what's achievable in a recession, and formally link minimum performance levels to the latest OBR forecast."  And
iii)  "the government should look at re-engineering the Work Programme so that a large proportion of the payment to providers is based on their performance compared with those of other providers, rather than judging them on inflexible targets and crucifying them when the economy falters."

 Mulheirn seems to want a return to something like the on-programme payments of privatised New Deal and FND.  That certainly created big profits for the companies but the outcomes were half what they forecast.  The money did not go into providing the support or skills training that clients needed.  There is no reason to suppose that it would be any different this time.  And how would revising down the performance targets help?  If the current 5.5% minimum was reduced to, say, 3.5% what is the point of the Work Programme at all?  You are just shovelling money into private companies which could be used to create real jobs.  As for comparing providers' performance with each other rather than with an objective standard; they have always performed similarly badly.  They would go on comfortably doing so.


The comments which follow the Guardian article are mostly very sensible.  What a pity that we can't engage Mulheirn in real debate.

Morale at an all-time low

It may be a holiday weekend, but for many A4e staff it's a gloomy one.  Some left work on Friday in the knowledge that the bonuses they expected to be paid this month have been cancelled.  Managers have been receiving up to 20% of their pay as financial performance bonuses for the previous year.  Last year's would have included 6 months of dual WP / FND work, and since FND was described by one employee as a "cash cow", the cancellation of the bonuses represents a significant loss.  They've also been told that anyone earning £26k pa or more will not be getting a pay increase.  Those earning less than £26k will get a 1% rise.  This comes on top of the news that Emma Harrison took £8.6 million out of the company last year.
Many staff report that they are unhappy for other reasons.  They were supposed to be dealing with caseloads of no more than 80, but some have upwards of 200 clients, so the amount of "tailored support" they can give is limited.  Tensions are high in some offices.  The system of referring people for "sanctions" (taking away their income) results in mistakes, and staff are having to confront some very angry clients.  
Staff turnover has always been high in A4e, and some say that it is only limited now by the lack of opportunity to move elsewhere.  But morale is reported to be at an all-time low.
(Don't bother posting comments attacking staff - they won't be published.)


This comes at a time when, as the Telegraph reports, the DWP has told Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, that it won't be publishing details of the 115 cases of potential fraud which don't involve A4e.  The "public interest" argument isn't strong enough, they say.

The debate which isn't happening

A story that made the mainstream media the other day is about a company called ALS and the contract it has to provide interpreting services to courts.  Nothing to do with A4e, you might say, but bear with me.  ALS has made a pig's ear of the contract.  Interpreters are refusing to work for them and people like judges and magistrates are very cross about it.  The minister responsible, Crispin Blunt, was interviewed on the Today programme, and Evan Davies asked him, several times, "Did you pick the cheapest bidder?"  Blunt was reluctant to answer, but eventually muttered that ALS had been the only company which could bid.

Blunt's admission is confirmation, if we needed it, that privatisation has been conducted as a cosy arrangement between governments and a very small number of private businesses.  Some years ago a Labour minister was questioned about another failed IT project.  Why had it been given to a company which had messed up several previous such contracts?  He admitted that it was the only company in a position to bid.

When the government decides to hand a service over to the private sector it often does so in discussion with the businesses likely to profit.  Initially there may be several companies and organisations willing to bid.  But it's an expensive process.  And when they see that one company is the chosen one, getting all the contracts for reasons they can't fathom, they drop out, and may well go out of business.  When A4e started scooping up all the contracts, the competition fell by the wayside, so that A4e, with its army of bid-writers, reigned supreme.  We heard recently about a council, Devon, which is outsourcing its core children's health services.  Local charities including Barnardo's, along with the local NHS trust have put in bids, but the contract is likely to go to either Serco or another private company, Virgin Health.

It soon becomes obvious that contracts are being designed in collaboration with the companies which will benefit from them.  Whether this happened with privatised New Deal we can't be sure, but it was certainly the case with FND.  The Work Programme shows how helpless government then becomes to oppose the companies.  Only the big companies could bid.  It was supposed to be strictly payment by results but isn't; an "attachment fee" was negotiated by the companies.  But you won't hear about that from ministers.  The extreme case is that of A4e getting the contract to design future contracts for which A4e can bid.  A single company can secure a monopoly in a particular niche.  A4e's involvement with direct payments for social care quickly became such a monopoly.  If a local council decides to outsource this service there is nowhere else to go.  A procurement process which states that past performance can't be taken into account enables the companies to bodge one contract after another.

Those business leaders who are making the most money from outsourcing are very close to government.  Most of the time the public know nothing about this, so Emma Harrison has done us a service by showing just how dangerous this can be.  

Naturally this view is not shared by everyone.  It has been difficult in recent weeks to find apologists for A4e, but one shows how a narrow perspective ignores the bigger picture.  It comes from an organisation called Arrival Education, a social enterprise which is sub-contracted to A4e on the Work Programme.  The author accuses the rest of us of "binary thinking", seeing the world only in black and white.  He (if it is a "he") is clever enough to see the nuances.  And so we have been grossly unfair to A4e, guilty of hatred and bile and making A4e into a pantomime villain.  It gets even more sanctimonious thereafter.  He defends A4e because the allegations relate to individuals, not to the company.  He's not that keen on Harrison herself but tells us all to grow up.  This is clearly someone who has no knowledge of the history which underlies the current situation.

A more thoughtful contribution comes from the Institute of Economic Affairs, one of those "think tanks" which provide cover for politicians.  It argues that the scandal surrounding A4e does not in any way invalidate the marketisation of public services.  And A4e is not, in welfare-to-work, a "market actor" because it is commissioned and paid by government.  The piece concludes that local commissioning and funding would be better.

There is no sign of the debate which really needs to take place.  Do we want the country run by a combination of Serco, Capita and G4S, with A4e a junior partner? 

It won't work

It's in all the papers this morning; a damning report on the Work Programme by the National Audit Office. The Telegraph reports it straightforwardly. It says that only 26% of those referred to the programme will get work, not the 40% forecast. "Fewer people than expected are being referred on to the work programme in the 'harder to help' category, as providers scramble to cover upfront costs by helping the easiest set of jobless back to work, such as the highly qualified or experienced, to ensure they collect money under the contracts." Some providers will get into serious financial difficulties. The government paid out £63 million to terminate the FND contracts, only to give the WP contracts to the same companies. The Financial Times points out that some companies offered price discounts to get the contracts. Not surprisingly, the industry says it doesn't recognise the figures. And Chris Grayling says it's all guesswork, and it's all right because it's the companies which are taking the risk, not the taxpayer. No, Mr Grayling, it's the unemployed who are taking the risk. He also says that the providers will be able to release "limited information" before the official release of data in March; so watch out for loads of spin - numbers of job outcomes without any start figures. What's important about this, of course, is that the government is waving the Work Programme as the solution to everything, especially in its determination to reduce welfare benefits.

No one has yet related this to the release of figures for Flexible New Deal by the DWP. They show that the total cost (money paid out to providers) was £770m. The percentage of "sustained" jobs to number of starts was 12.2%. Yes, just 12.2%.

Do you remember an exercise you used to do at school called "comprehension"? You had to read a piece of text and then answer questions to show you'd understood it. Well, if you were any good at that you might like to try reading a submission A4e made to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee on community budgets and tell me what the point of it is.

"The Report" on the Work Programme

Radio 4's "The Report" tonight on the Work Programme had a straightforward thesis: it is unlikely to succeed when it is being delivered by the same private companies which have failed on all previous welfare-to-work schemes.

They homed in on the Pathways to Work programme which failed so dismally for those companies. A4e and Reed, you remember, were interrogated by the Public Accounts Committee on why they had performed so much worse than Jobcentre Plus. Now, A4e's Nigel Lemmon ( Executive Director A4e Welfare) says that they did better in some areas than in others; but the programme pointed out that this was only on their own measures of performance. (Lemmon later on said that all the criticism of A4e was unfair.) Dan Finn, who is a professor of social inclusion, said that JCP did better because they had been doing the work for years - er, yes - and because they were in competition with the private sector. (No evidence was given for this, because there is no evidence.)

Then we got Hayley Taylor. But what she said was actually true; people are not realistic and the government has no comprehension of people's lives. A report from the DWP says that half the people on benefits are not looking for work. I haven't seen the report, so I don't know what that figure includes. There was an interview with Colin in Leeds, a graphics designer unemployed for 3 years, who described the poor facilities and lowest-common-denominator approach he has experienced on New Deal and FND. Then Hayley Taylor openly criticised her old employer, A4e, for the first time. She knew it was hopeless when she was faced with an 18-year-old who didn't want to work and a redundant 55-year-old who was desperate for a job and was expected to deliver the same lesson to them in the same class. The impression was given that this was the reason she left A4e, whereas she seems to have left to star in her own show. Anyway, the programme pointed out that much of the criticism they had heard was about A4e, which seemed to have an unenviable reputation. Yet it got the second-largest share of the WP contracts. We heard from Martin who is with A4e for the second time; he was shattered to hear them telling him that his CV was no good, when it had been done by the same A4e people the first time around. He said he felt he was serving a prison sentence.

The presenter said that they had spoken to numerous people on the WP who feel that they are being ignored because there are too many people on the programme. They also complained about assumptions that every client was illiterate, innumerate and stupid. One commentator said that the big companies had all bid for the WP because that was all there was, and they all assumed that the government will have to step in and renegotiate when it goes wrong. Chris Grayling said that won't happen. The CE of the WISE Group complained that they had lost out on the contracts and had to lay off 40% of their staff. The presenter then said that they had a confidential document which shows that Ingeus offered a 60% discount for part of the contract, and they were not the only providers which had done this. Grayling denied that the government was putting price before quality. It was pointed out that only half the promised 40% of the work went to small companies and voluntary sector, and there were fears that the primes would cherry-pick the easiest customers and pass the hardest on to their sub-contractors. Finally, and significantly, the presenter said that everyone they had spbout oken to in their research wanted a job. All in all, this was a worthy attempt to present a serious programme about the Work Programme.

Here's the document about A4e's "Families Unlimited" project to get sub-contracts for the new workless families contracts. There's an American organisation with the same name. Perhaps they didn't know.

I'm thinking of setting up a website with practical advice for the unemployed; jobsearch, application forms, CVs, interviews etc. What do you think?

What went wrong with FND

An interesting evaluation of Flexible New Deal has been published by the Policy Studies Institute. (The link to the full report doesn't work.) It doesn't name providers, which is a shame. However, some of its findings are:

• For the 18-24 year old group, it was less effective than New Deal.
• It often didn't live up to the expectation that support would be individually tailored and personalised.
• There was little innovation in the design of the service provided and "greater flexibility also appeared to have led to differences in the amount of support received (eg, variation in access to training and in-work support, and different rules on the payment of travel expenses)."
• Some providers didn't meet the requirement that they should see clients once a fortnight and couldn't find "work-related activity" for all clients.
• Finally, "The qualitative research identified several issues with regards to the effects and administration of sanctions, including poor timing and inconsistency of messages between Jobcentre Plus and providers, and staff believing long-term claimants were less likely to change their behaviour when faced with the prospect of losing money." I'd have to read the full report to be sure what that means, especially that last bit.

What's worrying is that the Work Programme is similar to FND in many respects.

Dispatches and redundancy

I didn't have the chance to watch the Channel 4 Dispatches programme tonight, but I will when it's on 4OD. The comments on the channel's website suggest that it got to the heart of the matter. If anyone saw it, tell us what you thought.

A4e, like other providers, has been sending out redundancy notices. Although the FND contracts have been extended until the WP starts, Pathways hasn't (and no wonder, given its abysmal results). One can feel genuinely sorry for those who have lost their jobs. But it's an inevitable aspect of privatisation. People are employed only for the length of the contracts. It's one of the reasons why outsourcing is cheaper.

Welfare Reform

The welfare reform bill is out, and with it the expected rhetoric about ending the dependency culture. The universal credit is the most important aspect, and few will quarrel with it. The problem is that the public are being led to believe that everyone could work if they really wanted to, and that there are many thousands of workshy scroungers out there who have to be bludgeoned into jobs. Turning down a job offer continues to be the major crime, despite the fact that the only job offers anyone ever turns down is the casual work through agencies.

Cameron poured scorn yesterday on the failure of FND (although his figures have been disputed) yet the government has decided to extend the contracts for another 3 months to bridge the gap to the start of the Work Programme, and is going to give the WP contracts to the same failed providers.

Waiting

In the privatisation of public services there are often periods like this, when some new contracts have yet to be given out and others are under threat. No new contracts are forthcoming from the majority of local authorities yet. They are desperately trying to cut chunks out of all their services. But the situation could well yield profits for A4e and the others, because it will seem cheaper to contract out than to pay your own staff. We know that this doesn't work in the long run, either for the employees or the public. But it does secure profits for the private companies for a fixed period, and when you're faced with impossible budget decisions that can seem like a good deal.

Most of the prime providers are advertising for "partners" in the Work Programme, as the government wants. A4e doesn't seem to be doing this, probably preferring to keep the dealings to themselves. Some of the voluntary sector organisations are agonising about whether they should engage with it at all. The real deals are being done with the banks which will finance the companies, and the question is whether the £400 - £600 "attachment fee" for each client will be enough to get them on board. Among many interesting aspects of the contracts will be how many of the existing FND providers get the new contracts in the areas in which they've been operating. My guess is all of them, because to do anything else would cost a lot of money in compensation.

CDG are still pushing the "Expert Volunteer Initiative", the plan to recruit an army of volunteer mentors for the unemployed. They have appointed as Chair of a working group Dr Mike Nussbaum, former chair of Volunteering England. They say that the initiative is designed "to complement the work currently carried out by welfare to work providers" but don't explain how this can sit alongside the payment of large sums of money to private companies.

Publicity for Emma Harrison seems confined to the Sheffield press at the moment. The Star says: "Unstoppable Emma Harrison is riding high with her ever-expanding welfare-to-work business A4e. But it's not all been brilliant news recently. She talks about the highs and lows of life at the top in tomorrow's Business Monthly." Has anyone seen this article?

Those figures

The DWP has released the figures for Flexible New Deal outcomes; you can download them from their site here. They are not immediately understandable, since all you get is the starts and outcomes for each month and, of course, the outcomes don't relate to the starts. What you can see straight away is how bad the figures are, and that A4e has performed comparably with the others.

There are two articles which interpret these figures in very different ways. One is by Alex Barber in the Financial Times. He asks "What has gone wrong with welfare-to-work?" and includes a graph to show how far below expectation the outcomes are. Barber argues that Grayling's criticism of the Labour government is misplaced. "Grayling argues it [paying too much money up front] destroyed incentives. But companies were still paid the bulk of their fee for getting someone into work. Not only that, but the Work Programme will also include upfront payments. It will just be called something like an 'activation fee'." And the "help based on individual needs" promised in the Work Programme will be little different from FND.

Another perspective altogether comes from Neil O'Brien in the Telegraph. O'Brien is one of those dangerous young men who provide the theoretical justification for political ideology. With no personal experience or historical insight he assumes the part of an authority on the subject, with selective use of data, and he wants to give more power to the providers to "sanction" people. He includes a table which shows that A4e's performance is slightly better than its competitor in each area. O'Brien has been around the media lately -he was on The Moral Maze last week - touting his view that we should have the time-limited kind of welfare-to-work that exists in some other countries, notably America.

Meanwhile, there's a whole new world of opportunity opening up for A4e. The government have endorsed the idea that groups of public service workers should turn themselves into "mutuals" or co-operatives. The bit they don't mention is that they would then have to bid for the contracts to provide the services. Even if the private companies don't get the contracts first time round, they will soon be picking them off.

Clawing back

Chris Grayling "slams" Flexible New Deal in a piece in the Express and Star, a Midlands paper. It was "chronically mismanaged", he says. "The Flexible New Deal programme helped 16,200 people find work, working out at a “staggering” £31,284 per job, said employment minister Chris Grayling. More than £500 million was spent in a year, mainly for service fees under which providers were paid for every person the government thought would go through the scheme, regardless of the outcome, the minister said. Mr Grayling cancelled the contracts on taking office in June and revealed that £100 million worth of service fees had been “clawed back”." He goes on to insist that by paying only for outcomes the Work Programme will be completely different. Naturally, he's blaming the Labour government. But the prime contractors in the new scheme will probably be the very companies which, he says, failed so badly on FND (and on Pathways). Was it just the contracts which were wrong, or were the companies at fault? Apparently not. And what does that bit about "clawing back" £100 million in service fees mean? Have A4e and the others had to pay that money back?

Who Knows Best?

Channel 4 bosses think that you can't have too many programmes about unemployed people, so Emma Harrison is on our screens again on Tuesday 10 August. It's the second in a series called "Who Knows Best" (the working title was "The Wager", but that was obviously dropped.) Ms Harrison is billed as "the country's top recruitment expert", and we're told that "Emma's approach is to work with people: 'I walk by their side, hold their hand and we go on a journey resulting in them getting a job that transforms their lives.'" This piece doesn't mention A4e, and it may well be that Channel 4 has taken the same approach as the BBC did with FR&J; they are not advertising the company as long as they don't mention it, but everybody else can.

Meanwhile, one of the specialist sub-contractors in the Flexible New Deal business, Dering Employment Services, has gone bust. Dering was run by and for deaf people, and according to the Carley Consult site, "The company has claimed that the reasons for its failure stem from alleged non-payment of invoices and breach of contract on the part of one of the largest prime contractors with whom it works, and it is understood that Dering are considering legal action." No one is saying at the moment which prime contractor they are talking about. This comes at a time when Chris Grayling, the Work & Pensions minister, is trying to reassure the voluntary sector that they will get a slice of the Work Programme cake. In an interview with John Plummer of the Third Sector he points to various measures to ensure that charities and the like take a full part in the contracts. "We don't want to create a situation where you end up with a hard taskmaster prime contractor in effect exploiting voluntary sector organisations," he said. But Plummer maintains that "unless third sector organisations are used to bidding for huge contracts, they had better make friends in the City soon - or their role in government welfare projects could continue to be limited primarily to subcontracting."

Figures for FND outcomes have not been published, but A4e, in a PR piece on Wales Online, announces that they have got 5,626 people into jobs in Wales in the last 12 months. This means nothing, of course, without the total number of people on the programme; and we're told that "A4e has worked with more than 20,000 Welsh customers". That's only 28%.

The transition

We reported last week Freud's reassurance to the FND providers "that all providers currently performing well will take a full place in the new programme and as long as they worked hard, they had no need to worry." That came after Emma Harrison's apparent assumption that A4e would have contracts. On Wednesday a written answer in the House of Lords shed a little more light on the situation. Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (who was, as Archie Kirkwood, a Lib Dem MP), asked "what is their [the government's] estimate of the legal costs of cancelling last year's phase 1 contracts with employment providers to deliver phase 1 of the Flexible New Deal." (See theyworkforyou.com). The answer from Lord Freud was, "We have embarked on some very productive meetings with FND1 providers on how between us we best manage the transition from Flexible New Deal to the new work programme. It is too early to provide an estimate of the likely costs of making this transition and indeed some of this will depend on whether existing FND1 providers are successful in bidding for the work programme." What that means is that the ideal scenario from the DWP's point of view is that the current providers bid for the new contracts and are acceptable, so that there is a cost-free transition. If any of them decide not to bid they will be entitled to compensation for the premature ending of the FND contracts. And that gives the "primes" like A4e a lever to extract concessions in the WP contracts, and little hope to any new providers who want to come in.

But according to Ben Brogan in the Telegraph the DWP is giving cause for concern. "Iain Duncan Smith is admired for his commitment to reform and the passion he brings to the issue. But the jury is out on whether he has the skills necessary to translate ideas into action, let alone deliver them at the helm of a complex bureaucracy. The ideas are great, but the detail is a killer. Some speculate that Chris Grayling was put in there to provide the executive oversight, after he made a success of the DWP brief in Opposition. But civil servants report that Lord Freud is roaming beyond his area and wonder whether he might turn out to be the Frank Field of the outfit if his frustrations with IDS begin to be felt. To cap it all Mr Field is being given a role to involve himself in welfare issues and the department fears that like some unmanned drone, he will keep circling above the battlefield, launching occasional deadly strikes." So nothing is certain. and it's still a case of "wait and see".

Ministerial statement

Chris Grayling has issued a written statement giving a bit more detail about the transition to the Work Programme. There are details on the Indus Delta site and on the CarleyConsult site. It contains nothing really new, but we now know that FND1 providers (Flexible New Deal phase 1) are being given 12 months' notice of the termination of their contracts. The worry now for those providers is whether they will be the preferred bidders for the new Work Programme contracts. A4e's Emma Harrison certainly gave the impression on Sunday that she expected that to be the case; and Graham Hoyle, Chief Executive of the Association of Learning Providers, has said that Freud has suggested as much, and wouldn't it be odd if they weren't, "unless of course any had not been able to cope with the current opportunities". It will be interesting to see whether a provider's record will be taken into account.

No decision has apparently been made about the future of Work for your Benefit.

The new buzzword is "framework". This appears to mean that a number of selected providers will do not only the basic WP stuff but also any other work-focussed services required by other "public service commissioners". How this framework will help to include smaller organisations, except as sub-contractors, is not clear.

That meeting

Some news of the meeting between Chris Grayling (with David Freud, the designer of the Work Programme) and the New Deal providers, from the Carley Consult site. It looks like there will be a new tender process in the FND phase 2 areas, while in the phase 1 areas, where it's already operating, the existing contracts will be renegotiated. The government wants interim contracts to tide them over to the full roll-out next year. Each of the current providers will be able to put their views to the ministers in separate meetings.

One paragraph needs some decoding. "There was a strong preference shown for greater collaboration and partnership, with the inclusion of the third sector and smaller providers likely to be a minimum specification requirement, and effectively ending the notion of sole provider delivery models. The needs of an increasingly diverse customer group, with a growing emphasis on customers on health related benefits, underlined the drive to bring together a mixed economy of provider expertise. Indeed, the direction may see traditional prime provider rivals working on a true consortia basis for the first time." I don't see a great deal of difference between that and what exists at the moment; it just means that the prime contractors have to get more smaller organisations on board before they bid.

Apparently the ministers stressed their commitment to payment only for outcomes, and "some providers continue to seek reassurance that such a model will pay in practice".

Limbo

First we note that Jim Knight, who had to defend the last government's actions on welfare-to-work, lost his seat at the general election. He is no longer an MP but it's fascinating that he is still a minister, because they all remain in office until a new government is in place.

The private companies which profit from government contracts are in limbo, like the rest of us. If, as seems likely, Conservative Theresa May becomes Work & Pensions secretary, contracts for phase 2 of FND will not be signed. Work for Your Benefit, Community Task Force Phase 2, Invest to Save, and the Personalised Employment Programme are also under threat if a Tory government carries out its promise / threat to implement the Work Programme. The problem with that is that it means asking bidders for FND phase 2 to revise their bids, and that could result in legal challenges. We can only wait and see.

Spinning the figures

We reported earlier this month that A4e had published the results of its first 6 months of FND. There had been, it said, nearly 30,000 starters and 2,630 into work. It also said that the figure for "sustained" jobs was nearly 200.

Now look at how this is being spun by A4e in local papers around the country.

Hull Daily Mail: "Almost 170 long-term unemployed people in Hull have successfully secured local jobs thanks to support from welfare-to- work provider A4e."

Halesowen News: "A4e, a nationwide group with offices in Wolverhampton Street, has given support and advice to help 139 people find work in its Dudley area"

Birmingham Mail: "More than 400 long-term unemployed people in the Black Country have won jobs with local firms thanks to support and advice from welfare-to-work provider A4e"

The similarity of wording in these pieces show that they originated with A4e; none of them say how many people have taken part in this programme, nor how many of these jobs are "sustained". All genuine jobs are to be celebrated, but this is spin, not news.

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.

FND Results

A4e have published figures for the first six months of FND on their news page.

• Nearly 30,000 starters in 6 months.
• Over 2,630 into work.

That's less than 9%, but that's irrelevant. Only jobs lasting 13 weeks or more are counted as outcomes, and so only those clients who started in the first 3 months can have possibly been in work for 13 weeks or more. We don't know how many did start in the first 3 months, but let's halve the total and call it 15,000. And A4e say that the figure for "sustained" jobs is nearly 200. That's 1.3%.

Okay, that's a bit unfair. Clients can be on FND for a year, and the figures are bound to rise. But they'll have to rise considerably to prove that the programme is worthwhile for providers and clients, as well as for the government. And it doesn't augur well for the Tories' plan to pay only on outcomes. It will be interesting to see what other providers have achieved.

New business and old

We learn (thanks, Roy) that A4e have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government. That makes, I think, 12 countries in which A4e does business. One country they haven't cracked is the US. Indeed, the traffic is the other way, with an American company getting contracts here. Perhaps it's because the system is different there, much like what the Conservatives want to bring in here. And that brings us to current contracts. Phase 2 of FND has been revised, as we reported, with the government cutting by half the number of expected clients. It had to give the bidding companies more time to work out their figures again, and now we hear that the deadline for revised bids has been extended to 23 April; and that the companies can bid for areas which they didn't previously bid for. Presumably that's because they expect some of the companies to pull out of the process. And the Jobseeker's Allowance (Work for your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010 went before the House of Lords for approval yesterday. It was an interesting debate which you can read here.