Sense and nonsense

We reported back in April this year that Richmond upon Thames council had put its contract for supporting and training local voluntary organisations out to tender, and the winning bid had come from the Foundation for Social Improvement.  Yes, the FSI, the creation of Emma Harrison, a registered charity with two other A4e directors on its board and based at A4e's Westminster offices.  The leader of the opposition on Richmond council was kicking up a fuss about handing contracts to a "scandal-hit organisation" rather than to the local CVS which had been doing the job satisfactorily.  20 days later we learned from the Guardian that the contract was worth £85,000 and that the council had decided to pull out because of the potential risks.  The author of the article, Patrick Butler, pointed out that the FSI had assets of only £90,000 in its latest accounts, and so it was odd that it had got the contract in the first place.  Now we have an update from something called Your Local Guardian.  The contract has been awarded to the Richmond CVS (Council for Voluntary Services) and the Richmond Adult Community College.  The piece shows how a bad reputation can follow you around.  "A4e was embroiled in scandal last month," it says, "when figures suggested it received £46m from the taxpayer last year, for its work on the Government's flagship Work Programme - despite finding long term jobs for less than 4% of its unemployed clients."
The FSI's accounts for the year ending March 2012 have not yet been received by the Charity Commission, but since 2008 it has received a total of £1,686,933, much of it from A4e, and spent a total of £1,691,561.

The government has come up with a "new" way of dealing with NEETs - those youngsters not in employment, education or training.  The Telegraph calls it an "earn or learn" plan, while the Express, in typical style, headlines it "Go to work or lose benefits".  It could involve "the creation of new-style 'traineeships' set up to prepare school leavers for jobs in relatively low-skilled industries."  Does anyone smell a new contract here?  Perhaps we should recall Labour's original New Deal scheme, back in the late 1990s, set up to training or work placements for NEETs.  That expanded into the full New Deal which was outsourced by David Blunkett in 2006.

"Whipping girl of the welfare apologists"

That's the curious description of A4e's owner Emma Harrison in the headline to an interview in the Sunday Times last Sunday.  It's a neat way of insulting all of us.  And another curiosity is that this is described as Harrison's "first interview since the scandal", completely ignoring the interview she gave to the Daily Mail on 11 August.  There's nothing new in this one, except that the self-justification is stronger than ever.  "I was busy helping families get back to work," she says.  The history of Emma and her company follows, complete with tuck-shop incident, and then the account of how she thought of the "family champions".  Her initiative was the inspiration for the whole government programme.  But then, "Suddenly I'm put forward as the face of all evil".  The article goes on: "Harrison does not deny that there was wrongdoing at A4e, but she believes it was blown out of proportion by political point-scoring.  Those who wanted to attack the government's controversial welfare policies had a handy whipping girl."  On the money, that £8.6m, she's still "unrepentant", giving the same explanation of her entrepreneurship as she gave to the Mail.  She now spends her time working with her Foundation for Social Improvement, helping small charities.
Perhaps this is another attempt at rehabilitating Harrison's reputation.

From bad to worse

Another story from the Guardian's Patrick Butler details more fallout from A4e's situation.  A contract awarded to the Foundation for Social Improvement, a charity set up and largely funded by A4e, has been withdrawn.  Richmond council gave the £85,000 contract to the FSI for charity business skills training, but has now decided to pull out,citing the potential risks of giving a contract to an organisation so dependent financially on a company now under investigation.  Butler hints that it was odd that the FSI got the contract in the first place, given that it had assets of less than £9,000 in its latest accounts.  Well done to Richmond's Lib Dem leader on the council, Stephen Knight, for raising concerns.

And yet more contracts

Thanks to the Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats for this story.  Richmond upon Thames council, like a lot of other local authorities, funded the Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) to support and train people in small, local voluntary organisations and charities.  The CVS branches usually consist of paid professionals helped by volunteers.  They are probably not experienced in drawing up bids for contracts to do the work.  So when Richmond Council, led by Conservative peer Lord True, decided to put the work out to contract for £85,000 the CVS lost - to the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI).  Not A4e - or not quite.  The FSI is the creation of Emma Harrison and has received £1m from A4e.  Harrison is Chair of the Trustees (although the piece on the website about her doesn't mention A4e) and two other A4e directors, Jo Blundell and Andrew Dutton, are also trustees.  It's a registered charity, and it was originally about helping small charities to raise funds.  Now it is obviously using the bid-writing skills of A4e; it is based at A4e's Westminster offices, so it would be silly not to.  As Lib Dem leader on the council, Stephen Knight, says: "It beggars belief that Richmond council is intent on handing a contract to the A4e group of organisations, while the government and police are investigating evidence of widespread fraud and mismanagement. Local residents will be shocked that the Tories are intent of pulling funding from the local Council for Voluntary Service and instead handing a contract to a scandal-hit organisation based in Westminster."

There's an interesting piece on the Morning Star website (scroll down) headed "A4E isn't always terrible. Sometimes it is just mediocre."  A4e was hired to train 30,000 childminders in 2004, and the writer has got hold of an evaluation of the contract carried out by consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers.  It's not good.  In fact, it's pretty grim.

Most of the newspapers have reported the story we took from Exaro yesterday about A4e being the preferred bidder for another contract, to run the Equalities and Human Rights Commission's helpline.  The Daily Mail takes the opportunity to re-run its previous graphics on A4e, but also quotes Margaret Hodge as saying: "This belies common sense.  There are so many question marks about this company’s competence and integrity that I can’t believe any government department is thinking of signing another contract with them.  The Home Office should hold off from making any decision until the investigations have been completed."


PS.  I read the latest Private Eye after posting the first paragraph above.  They have the story; but they also show that A4e used the FSI to help win the Work Programme contracts - the "bid candy" which the charities claim they became for the prime providers.  The Eye has also set its sights on another prime, Working Links, recalling a leaked "compliance visit" report last year which showed that Working Links in Liverpool had made 85 claims for outcomes which it was not entitled to. 

In the News

The difference between news and PR is always hard to discern with A4e, and there seems to be none at all today with a story in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph which is largely taken from A4e's own site. But hey, it's a good story. The brother of the Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne, name of Bill, doesn't share his brother's good fortune. He had been working as a fork lift truck driver, but had been unemployed for a year and so was sent to A4e. The upshot is that he is now working - for A4e. The photo, on both sites, has the poster in the background with the cartoon Emma Harrison on it.

Emma herself was in Downing Street last week with other "philanthropic entrepreneurs" to discuss Cameron's "big society" obsession. According to the ICG site she was happy to endorse the project. "A4e (formally Action for Employment) is the prime contractor for government services like 'Flexible New Deal' and 'Education for Offenders' and have helped more than a million people in Britain back to work. 'Let us all accept that people have been helping people for ever - and that it gives us all a wonderful sense of purpose and is a thing that we can all do. It would build communities, friendships, self esteem, confidence and help people get back to work,' said Emma Harrison, who is also the founder of the charity Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI)." I wonder where that figure of "more than a million" comes from. Does it include the results of all the subcontractors?

It's the last of "The Fairy Jobmother" tonight, and the latest pearl of wisdom from Hayley is “The jobs are there. It’s being prepared to start at the bottom and work your way up. There’s something there for everyone if you’re prepared to work hard enough.” (The Herald). So if you can't find a job it's because you're not trying hard enough. Thanks, Hayley.

History of the company

In the 1980s a small engineering training company was set up in Sheffield to take advantage of the Conservative government's willingness to pour money into such companies for uncertain returns. The owner, Harrison, took his daughter, Emma, into the company, then quickly skipped to Germany. This part of A4e's history has acquired the aura of legend. Emma Harrison was a young graduate, suddenly landed with a company to run, and an absent father who was busy draining it of money. In 1991 Emma renamed the outfit Action for Employment (quickly abbreviated) and set about making money. She remains almost the sole owner.

The breakthrough came with the Labour government's New Deal programme. A4e rapidly became the "preferred bidder" for contracts to provide back-to-work training. Their success baffled their competitors, who knew they were putting in equally good bids. This led to rumours that it was Emma's connections who were responsible. Someone high up in government, perhaps? A Sheffield MP name of Blunkett, maybe? But there was no evidence for this, and rival training companies went out of business as A4e prospered.

Business Link - questions in the House In 2001 the Business Link organisations, which had been formed locally, were put out to tender by the government. A4e bid for all of them. In their determination to get the contracts they were prepared to stretch the truth. In Somerset they had stated that local leaders, including the leader of the Council, supported the bid. That was news to the gentlemen in question, and the bid had to be withdrawn. In Humberside it was felt that something similar was happening, but government ministers seemed intent on awarding the contract to A4e. The company scooped up the majority of these contracts nationwide. They lost many of them in 2007.

EI EXCLUSIVE: Britain's double game In 2005 suspicions were heightened when A4e was able to work in Israel, in contravention of British government policy but apparently with British Embassy assistance. The contract also marked the beginning of A4e's expansion into the international market. They have been able to boast of their success in Britain in "reforming" public services, and by 2008 were being described as a £120m global organisation. In Israel, business appears to be going well. See an article in the Jerusalem Post, where A4e's genius for propaganda is well demonstrated. The company is now known as Amin in israel.

A4e operates in a growing number of countries, trading on their claim to be "the UK’s largest private provider of public services in the labour market and social integration sectors, including the welfare to work programme ‘New Deal Prime Contractor'". They are established in France, Germany and Australia. We also learn from a Polish journal that it "currently manages two projects in Poland, in Szczecin and in Zabrze, supporting 550 people back into work by the end of 2008". Another developing market is India, where A4e have a foot in the door. Turkey looks set to be the next opportunity, and they are trying to establish themselves in South Africa.

A4e's philosophy is now simple: bid for everything. Currently they employ over 60 professional bid-writers. The drive to diversify in the last few years has been partly the result of a drop in profits. In 2002 -03 A4e was worth £50 million on the basis of profits of £4m and sales of £60m. In 2004 - 05 the figures were £3.9m in profit on £75.7m sales. Note that these "sales" are the money spent on meeting the contracts; profit is what they manage to keep. Profits declined sharply in 2007, as a number of contracts were not renewed. Undaunted, Emma said that she was "proud that the company has sustained pure organic growth at a phenomenal rate" and forecast an increase in profits to a £500 million turnover by 2014.

A4e has set up the Foundation for Social Improvement, which apparently aims to encourage the "third sector", especially smaller charities, to depend on them for training and access to government. They are "proud to be working in conjunction with Communities and Local Government (CLG) to deliver Connecting Communities Plus scheme". The FSI is a "social enterprise", an organisation which blurs the line between the voluntary sector and for-profit businesses. It's another example of the company's ability to infiltrate all aspects of the government's dealings with the most disadvantaged.