Emma Harrison and the media

Looking back on the story of A4e, I'm struck by the relationship over the years between its owner Emma Harrison and the media.  To say that she was the face of the company is a gross understatement.  She seemed to see the company as a reflection of herself.  Her picture was prominent in their offices rather as dictators demand huge portraits of themselves all over their countries; and as the company grew so did her sense that it was all about her.  Staff were "rewarded" by being invited to weekends camping in the grounds of Thornbridge Hall.  The select few got to have "tea with Emma".  Most of the employees saw this for what it was, but daren't say so out loud.  Yet the media were continually charmed by her.
I didn't see the Secret Millionaire programme she made - and I'm glad of that.  But whenever she was interviewed about her supposed area of expertise something strange happened.  Harrison appeared on the Daily Politics once and was taken apart by Andrew Neil.  Yet about a year later she appeared again, and got very soft treatment, as if Neil had forgotten the first interview entirely.  Then she appeared on the same programme as "guest of the day" and contributed absolutely nothing.  Channel 4's worthy Benefit Busters series featured two films made in A4e offices, and one of those at least should have set alarm bells ringing about what was happening in New Deal - but didn't.  In a brief interview after the second film Harrison bragged about her contacts in government.  It was then put to her that a big problem for the unemployed was that short-term work meant long delays in getting benefits again when the work stopped.  What should be done about that?  Her reply was memorable: "How should I know?"
On Radio 4's The Moral Maze it was Harrison herself who had to correct the presenter, who thought A4e was a charity.  And on the Today programme the interviewer, Justin Webb, seemed mesmerised by her, asking no relevant questions and letting her talk rubbish.  A high point (or low, depending on your point of view) came with her starring role in Famous Rich and Jobless, a horribly exploitative series of poverty porn.  (Even today the BBC's website page for the programme describes A4e as "the largest employment agency in the world, responsible for getting thousands of people back to work".)  Harrison was supposed to be an expert, helping and guiding.  One unemployed man was recommended to go to a specialist agency.  Problem solved?  No.  After the series was shown he was still out of work and very bitter towards Harrison, who had promised help.  She couldn't do anything, she said, because A4e didn't operate in his area.  In another series on another channel Harrison was pitted against another expert to find a job for someone who was "hard to help".  She solved it neatly - by calling in a favour from a friend to give the lad a trial at a job.  And she won.
Harrison had become a celebrity, employing a celeb agency to get her work, and she popped up regularly on such diverse shows as Eggheads (I missed that) and Masterchef (as a guest at a dinner to sample the contestants' efforts).
It must have been hard when all that stopped so abruptly.  Perhaps that's why she agreed to the interview on Channel 4 News, long after her fall from grace, when the A4e WP results were leaked.  Surely the media would be kind to her again?  But that was in the past, and it was a disaster.
The media can build you up, but they can also bring you down.

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.

Questions, answers and entertainment

Iain Duncan Smith appeared before the Work and Pensions Select Committee this morning to answer questions about the status of his Universal Credit project.  There's an account of what happened on The Register website (marred somewhat by lazy language).  UC is, apparently, proceeding slowly.  In October it will be rolled out to six more jobcentres; but these will be in places, including Harrogate and Bath, where unemployment is relatively low; and it will still only take in single people with the simplest of claims.  Despite some scathing questioning by Glenda Jackson MP, IDS and his mate Lord Freud got off lightly.  This afternoon the committee were asking questions about the DWP's misuse of statistics.  Many had anticipated that IDS would be skewered for his blatantly misleading figures.  (See a blog piece here.)  But it was a couple of civil servants who had to face the music.  Apparently the ministers will be called in September.

Remember that spate of TV programmes, culminating in the appalling "Famous, Rich and Jobless", which made entertainment out of poverty?  (There have been a few more since then, I know, but I refuse to acknowledge them.) It couldn't get any worse, you might have thought.  But perhaps it's about to.  On BBC1 tomorrow night (11 July) we have, first, "Great British Budget Menu" "in which leading chefs tackle food poverty by living with three families who are struggling to make ends meet."  What fun.  I should have given them my recipe for carrot and lentil soup.  Having watched that you may be in the mood for "Nick and Margaret: We all Pay your Benefits".  This is a "two-part special in which ...... Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford try to find out how much unemployment benefit is enough to survive on."  They went to Ipswich.  And they pitted workers against claimants.  As we've pointed out before, this is a false dichotomy.  I won't be watching.

TV - and being ill

With odd timing, A4e has published accounts of TV programmes "Benefit Busters" and "Famous, Rich and Jobless" on their MyA4e site. These are clearly dated July 2010 but read as if they are recent or haven't yet happened. Perhaps they are meant as a reminder that "The Fairy Jobmother" is just a spin-off. After all, the Doncaster Free Press managed to review that programme, calling Ms Taylor a "job expert", with but a single mention of "training company A4e". However, for all the hype, Jobmother only managed to get 8.9% of the viewers on Tuesday (according to MediaWeek), compared with 20.7% for BBC1's mini-series "The Silence" and 11.2% for ITV's "The Bill". It will be interesting to see how the second episode fares.

Reminding us that A4e has many irons in the fire, their Pathways site tells us that "A4e pathways are at the forefront with support for employers and GPs with the introduction of the fit note. A4e Pontypool pathways have contacted every GP surgery in Torfaen and Monmouthshire offering their expertise in reducing long term sickness related absence from work. The response from GP surgeries has been good and a number of meetings to discuss how the A4e pathways team could have a key role in supporting people where the doctor recommends an early return to work is work in progress." There is information about these new "fit notes", which were introduced in April, on the NHS website. So you could find yourself being referred to A4e just for being ill.

Unemployment as entertainment

I've decided that I'm not going to watch "The Fairy Jobmother". I am sick of televison companies treating the unemployed as entertainment.

"Benefit Busters" was a gallant attempt to raise some important issues. We saw lone parents being "persuaded" into what have become known as poundland jobs, a synonym for the worst kind of mimimum wage work. We saw disturbing scenes at an A4e office, and what happens to people on IB who are being "assessed". But there was no further interest from the media in any of these issues. The only outcome was that a controversial individual in the first programme got a contract, because her methods make good television, supposedly. BBC's "Famous, Rich and Jobless" was a disgraceful mix of celebs and distress which proposed no solutions. The Panorama programme gave Digby Jones a platform to spout ill-informed nonsense and obscure the real issues facing the young, unemployed men. Now we are to be treated to another series which seems set to paint unemployed people as lacking in motivation, confidence and "life skills".

I have nothing against Hayley Taylor personally. The interview with her on the Channel 4 website shows that she came into the work in the same way as did many other people working on New Deal. She got lucky. But I don't feel obliged to watch any more of this.

Response to a complaint

There were some who felt that the "Famous, Rich and Jobless" programme gave some very helpful free publicity to Emma Harrison and A4e. At least one person made a formal complaint to the BBC about it, and has passed on the interesting response he got:

"I understand that you have concerns regarding what you believe was one particular company being promoted.
We've discussed your concerns with the production team who've confirmed that the programme didn't make reference to A4e in this series at all. We describe Emma as founder of UK's biggest independent employment provider. She is an expert in her field, with direct, first hand experience dealing unemployed people, understanding them and helping them along their way. Her contribution to the programme has nothing to do with A4e and we don't feel the company was promoted in any way. We did film a scene in an A4e office in Wolverhampton, though we did not tell the audience that is was A4e, or suggest it was Emma's company. I hope this addresses your concerns."

(I'm assured that the errors in this were in the original.)

It's true, of course, that the company wasn't mentioned in the programme itself, and they were careful that there was no identification of A4e in the Wolverhampton office shots. But this is disingenuous. All the previews in the press mentioned A4e; they could hardly avoid it. And was it pure coincidence that the day before the first programme went out, Mrs Harrison was a guest on the BBC's "Working Lunch"? Perhaps it was, since in the BBC the right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. But there you have it.

What next?

It's been an interesting week for A4e on the PR front. And it has illustrated the way in which the attention of the media (TV, radio and the newspapers) comes and goes, and rarely joins up into a serious examination of issues. A couple of years ago Emma Harrison was getting a hard time on the BBC's The Daily Politics as the welfare-to-work model was under fire. This week she was being treated with something approaching reverence on the same channel on Working Lunch. There was a weekend of interest when a newspaper published details of fraud, and an item on Channel 4 News followed. But that was quickly over. Some months back we had Benefit Busters on Channel 4, which really did raise the important questions. But that can only be done once. TV needs visuals, and it needs to have a story. So this week the BBC fell back on the tired "celebrity tourism" thing, and left all the important issues unexamined. Radio does it better. The Radio 5 Live programme was excellent - but it has a very small audience. Now BBC Radio 4 is planning a File on Four programme on New Deal. This is usually an intelligent and thoughtful programme, not easily scared off by commercial interests. It will probably not be gunning for any particular provider, and will strive to be fair and balanced. When will anyone, particularly politicians, join up the dots and begin to see the real picture?

Famous, Rich and Jobless, Part Two

This really was "celebrity tourism". And for me the elephant in the room was New Deal. Two of the subjects had been unemployed long enough to have been through it more than once, but there was no mention of the programmes. Why? And what did the "experts" contribute? Emma Harrison made some patronising remarks right at the start about the celebs having exhibited all the behaviours of the long-term unemployed who she sees as she goes all round the world. She told Nick that there was a new government scheme in Wolverhampton to help ex-offenders (why hadn't the Job Centre told him that?) and she gave Lou a vacancy from the Job Centre for a job which had already been taken. They recommended Mark to a specialist agency for professionals, and Mark was right to ask why he hadn't been told about it in the first three months of his redundancy.

It was a dreadful programme, not least because it didn't tell the whole truth.

Reactions

The Guardian's verdict on "Famous, Rich and Jobless" was scathing. They called it "the latest example of celebrity tourism" and I agree. I haven't had the chance yet to watch the programme which followed it at 10.35 - I hope it's on iplayer. But my reaction last night was based on relief that it wasn't as bad as it threatened to be.

All of us with bitter experience of being out of work know that 4 celebs pretending to be unemployed for 4 days was going to be superficial at best. But they did confront the reality that was so different from their preconceptions. If many of us were wondering when they would be told about the way the benefits system works, let's remember that most people have no idea, and would have been surprised that 16 hours of work means that you lose all your benefits. Of course, it would have been better if they'd gone further and shown that it's not actually possible to live on casual work; that the cash-in-hand work that two of the celebs got was not only illegal, but meant that they would end up without NI contributions and be penalised later in life.

Many of us would have cheered on Larry Lamb as he reacted to Emma Harrison's patronising characterisation of the unemployed. But we would also have challenged his cheerful attitude to living on the dole. Yes, we can survive on £39 for 4 days. But what happens when the phone bill comes in; when it's someone's birthday, or a wedding, and you can't buy a present; when there's a social function you can't go to? The introduction of Fiona, a real person, was the antidote to this silliness. She is living on cheap bread because she can't afford proper food. And a part-time job in Asda is impossible for her to take.

I don't look forward to tonight's episode, when the celebs go to stay in the homes of real people. That looks like being "celebrity tourism" at its worst.

Famous, Rich and Jobless, Part One

It was actually nowhere near as bad as I expected.

It started predictably. The four celebs had all the preconceptions about anyone being able to get a job, lots of people fiddle the system, etc. But the reality was different. Meg, Emma and Gavin all managed to find work (did that have anything to do with the camera being there?). When, we wondered, were they going to be confronted with the reality of the benefits system? They were. When Craig Last explained to Meg that she had worked for 16 hours and would have to hand back the £39 they'd been given at the start, Meg refused and became a benefits cheat. Emma Harrison explained the situation to Dermot, who had also worked more than 16 hours. He says that in that situation he would not tell the Jobcentre and would break the law.

Larry Lamb was the most fun. He knew he had no chance of getting a job, so idled, congratulating himself on being able to manage on the money. The confrontation with Emma Harrison came on the beach at Hartlepool. Emma pointed out that the money is job seeker's allowance. When they have walked away from each other, Emma says that she meets people like him so many times, trapped in the system, but she's shocked and fascinated that he's become so in two days. Larry calls it "patronising bullshit". The Asda application form that he hasn't yet filled in gets completed on behalf of the lady he meets who is the tenant of the house he's in. She is out of work, and can't live on the £64 per week that she gets.

It could have been a lot worse.

Pre-publicity

The pre-publicity for this wretched programme makes watching it almost redundant. We've seen the curious and inaccurate ways in which A4e and Emma Harrison have been described, such as "the government's back-to-work tsar", and there is another instance today in the Manchester Evening News.

"Guiding them are Emma Harrison, founder of the largest employment agency in the world" No, chaps, it's not an employment agency. It goes on: Emma says a new approach - like the government’s Flexible New Deal scheme she helps administer - was needed to help the long term jobless. “There may be issues of depression, illiteracy or drug addiction which our staff help people to address. There’s no ‘one size fits all’. Every person is different. “We hope these programmes will highlight the enormous problems faced by everyone seeking re-employment.” That's the line which she took in yesterday's Working Lunch programme.

The Mirror is more accurate, writing of "Emma Harrison whose company A4e (as seen on C4's Benefit Busters) helps get the jobless back into work."

For anyone who is interested in unemployment rather than celebrities, there is another programme, "Jobless" on BBC1 at 10.35 tonight.

That programme

We're getting the inevitable trailers now for the dreaded "Famous, Rich and Jobless" programme (but no sign of Emma as yet). My TV listings magazine says that the four celebs "are given four days' worth of benefits (£39) and a roof over their heads, and told to go out and get a job without using any of their own contacts". How realistic! Any fool can live on £39 for four days. It's living on it for week after week and month after month, with no reserves to fall back on, which is the challenge. It goes on: "In an impressive display of effort and resilience, three of them pound the streets and manage to get work." See how easy it is! The review ends: "But the big problem is that it has more to do with celebrities coping with discomfort than ordinary people srruggling to get by without a job." Of course. I wonder which came first; "We need another programme with suffering celebs" or "Let's do something to highlight the problem of unemployment"?

Meanwhile A4e's Roy Newey twitters that he's off to India and to China to look for business.

Cranking up the publicity

The publicity machine for "Famous, Rich and Jobless" is cranking up, with trailers on the Beeb and rubbish in the papers. Today we have a piece in the Sun about the "cheating" of Diarmuid Gavin, and it picks up the description of Emma Harrison that we noted in an earlier post. "But Gavin was caught breaking the rules by show mentor Emma Harrison. And the Government's "Back to Work" tsar wasn't too impressed. Entrepreneur Emma, who is just behind Kylie Minogue in the Sunday Times Rich List after making millions through her training company A4e, revealed: 'At the start of the show, Diarmuid was supposed to give us all his cash and credit cards. But he hid a credit card from us and when he was placed with an unemployed family he didn't like it and went and stayed in a hotel.'" There's that "Tsar" thing again. We need some explanation from the government about that. The BBC's own website says only, "They are guided and assisted by Emma Harrison, founder of A4e (the largest employment agency in the world, responsible for getting thousands of people back to work), and Craig Last, a former youth worker for the charity Centrepoint, who has helped many homeless young people find jobs." Funny how Emma is getting so much publicity and Mr Last so little.

This programme threatens to be the nadir of celeb "reality" shows.

Back to Work Tsar

We can expect more of this. The Digital Spy site has a piece to whet the appetite for the "Famous, Rich and Jobless" programme which begins next Tuesday. Poor old Larry Lamb got it in the neck from Emma: "[Larry] just came up with a host of excuses not to engage with what we were trying to do," Harrison commented. "He hadn't earned a penny and he didn't even make an effort to try and find work. Trying to demonstrate to him the harsh truths of unemployment was exasperating." But it's the next paragraph which is disturbing. "Harrison is the founder of employment agency A4e and is currently working as the government's 'Back to Work Tsar'." She's what? Really? When did that happen? What have I missed?

Famous, Rich and Jobless

More details have been published of this series. "Back to work tsar and chairman of A4E, which rehabilitates the long-term unemployed, Emma Harrison is to appear in a new BBC TV series, Famous, Rich and Jobless where ‘unemployed’ celebrities will experience joblessness." Given the list of celebs taking part, it reminds you of "I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here". And all lovely national and international publicity for Emma and A4e, paid for by our licence fees.