Not accountable to anybody

A curious story popped up in my Google alerts the other day, from the Rotherham Business News website.  It reported on the new "Help to Work" programme, then went on to the fact that Rotherham Council had discussed a review into the Work Programme as it operated locally, with Serco and A4e.  The report was particularly concerned about sanctions.  Both companies were invited to take part in the review, in person or in writing, but declined, "with A4e taking the view – based on advice from their Department for Work and Pensions account manager - that it would be inappropriate to respond to the panel's questions."  I'm not entirely sure what a DWP account manager is.  But clearly A4e don't see themselves as accountable to anyone.
The DWP has shied away from investigating another provider, Seetec.  Private Eye broke the story some time ago.  Two whistle-blowers had reported fraud around Seetec's Work Choice contract.  The DWP has now "investigated" and exonerated the company.  But it didn't interview the whistle-blowers, and claimed that it had all the evidence needed in their emails - which contained no detail, just a short summary.  The Eye says that Margaret Hodge is on the case.
It's staggering that the value of outsourcing contracts has risen by 168% in the first quarter of 2014.  It's gone to £2.1bn.  In local government it's up by 60%.  And more than half the contracts are first-time outsourcing deals.  The government wants more.  Private Eye also reported in the latest issue on a meeting held by Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, with bosses from G4S, Serco, Capita and Atos, to discuss "how to develop the government's commercial reforms".  Apparently they discussed "greater openness and trust between government and its suppliers".  But of course, you can't have openness when commercial firms are involved, unless you change the law.  And businesses are lobbying hard to avoid that.
There was an excellent, if chilling, article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian last week.  Read it and weep.  Even if the Tories are rejected at the next election it will be too late to undo their sell-off of our public services.

The PAC agrees with us

The Public Accounts Committee has published its report on Contracting out public services to the private sector.  It's not a long document, particularly the section on recommendations, and you can read it here.  It supports all the things which I and others have been saying for a long time about the perils of outsourcing.
As usual it was not reported in the Tory press.  The Guardian and the Independent covered it well, and the BBC mentioned it.  The Guardian spoke to Margaret Hodge, chairman of the committee, ahead of the publication.  She called the report "damning" and said the DWP was "on the verge of meltdown" with its contracts.  There has to be an end to the secrecy surrounding the contracts on the grounds of commercial confidentiality.  Even the CBI supports that one.  And there must be much better management of contracts.  The DWP is allowed its usual paragraph of self-justification, and government minister Francis Maude was invited onto the BBC's Today programme to waffle unchallenged about how things were improving.  
The Independent's Nigel Morris had a scathing piece much like the Guardian's.  The report, he said, "accused ministers of trying to cover up mistakes by refusing to divulge details of contracts."  He quotes Margaret Hodge as saying that the absence of competition meant that we have "privately-owned public monopolies which have become too big to fail."  The article mentions the A4e fraud case, along with G4S and Serco.  
There's another piece on the Guardian's website which puzzles me a bit.  It's by Jane Dudman, and it focuses on A4e's part in the PAC's verdict.  I'm puzzled because I can't find the opinions she attributes to Margaret Hodge in the report (if you can, let me know).  Mrs Hodge wants to know why "scandal-hit" A4e are still in the running for contracts.  Dudman goes on: "Last month, four former employees of A4e pleaded guilty in Reading Crown Court to 30 acts of fraud and forgery. But even Hodge was forced to acknowledge this was not a case of individuals trying to enrich themselves. None of the former staff benefited personally, she noted."  Now, if Mrs Hodge did say that, we need to tell her that she could well be mistaken.  She may be assuming that the profits from this forgery, the false outcome claims, went only to the company.  But A4e had the practice, until recently, of paying particular individuals in an office a "commission" for each outcome, and rewarding whole teams for achieving for good outcome figures.  Under that system, individuals had every incentive to push up their earnings by pushing up the figures.
One would love to think that the Public Accounts Committee's excellent work would change things, but I suspect it won't.

It wasn't me, it was him

The Public Accounts Committee has published its report on Universal Credit.  It's pretty damning.  There's a comprehensive account in the Guardian.  Since then, there has been a concerted attempt by Conservative MPs to place the blame squarely on Robert Devereux, the Permanent Secretary at the DWP and the accounting officer for the project.
The Times said this morning that Iain Duncan Smith had tried to get Tory members of the committee to blame Devereux.  That's been denied.  The report doesn't blame individuals, but Margaret Hodge said this morning that the responsibility was from the top down.  Since then I've heard three different Tories blame the civil servants.  Francis Maude was driven to explicitly exonerating IDS.  He commissioned the review in 2012, says Maude, which identified the problems; and he described him as "visionary".
Whatever happened to ministerial accountability?  Younger readers won't be aware that there was a time when the ministers took responsibility and resigned even when the disaster clearly wasn't their fault.  Not now.  But if Devereux does go, he will be free to speak.  That might worry Duncan Smith.
Many people have asked why IDS is still in his job.  Surely his track record should have got him reshuffled to the back benches ages ago.  My feeling is that IDS is so hated, so much the focus of people's anger at the cruelty of the welfare "reforms", that it's better for Cameron to leave him in place and let him soak it all up than to put someone else in the firing line.

Unanswered questions

Two Labour MPs have tried asking questions about A4e but have not received answers.

The first is Liam Byrne.  Yesterday he put in a written question to Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister, asking "when allegations of fraud at A4e were drawn to the attention of his Department's Propriety and Ethics team.  The answer was: "As has long been the practice, information relating to internal discussion and advice is not normally disclosed."  No joy there, then, but I don't suppose Byrne expected anything else.
Last Tuesday Fiona Mactaggart asked "the Secretary of State for Justice what contracts his Department has with A4e; and what the (a) purpose and (b) value is of each such contract."  Now, you would have thought that was straightforward.  But Kenneth Clarke replied: "The Ministry of Justice has no current contracts with A4e. However other departments do have contracts with A4e that deliver services to offenders."  What Mactaggart probably had in mind were the contracts for prison education, known as OLASS (Offender Learning and Skills Service).  Helpfully, back in 2008 A4e submitted a memorandum to the Public Accounts Committee trumpeting its involvement in these contracts.  On their own website A4e talk about working in 20 prisons with 400 staff on OLASS and providing careers guidance in 7 prisons.  It's big business.  And apparently these contracts don't come from the Ministry of Justice.  So, do they come from the Department for Education?  It would seem so. 
If even MPs have trouble getting information, no wonder the rest of us struggle.