Question Time

Iain Duncan Smith is on BBC's Question Time tonight.  Don't expect any hard questions, however.  It's clear from the line-up that the intention is to lead on the issue of Islam in schools.  If you're thinking that it depends on what questions the audience ask, you'd be wrong.  I was in a QT audience 10 years ago, and I don't suppose much has changed.  The producers select those questions they want to use.  However, since another panel member is Labour's Chris Bryant, who is the shadow welfare minister, there will probably be a discussion on employment.  There's a useful summary on FullFact which could help with that.

It's also possible that the Oxfam graphic will be raised.  Tories hate it and are attacking Oxfam's charitable status because they've become "political".  The Daily Mail has the right-wing response, but there's a very sensible article by Richard Murphy on the Tax Research UK site.  There could be a lively argument on this, especially as Ian Hislop is also on the panel.  I don't suppose for one moment that IDS will be asked about threats to shut down the Trussell Trust.
The programme will inevitably be a disappointment, but Twitter should be fun.

The freedom of the press - to lie

The owner of the Daily Express is Richard Desmond.  The editor is Hugh Whittow.  The writer of a particularly shameless article today is Giles Sheldrick.  I mention these names because newspaper articles don't come about by accident.  They are the result of deliberate decisions by men who consider themselves free to debase the whole concept of truth.  This is propaganda of the most egregious kind, peddling an interpretation of figures which have been shown to be false.  These men don't have to explain why they do this.  They are not answerable to the people they insult and denigrate.  They just make money.
If you have read the article, you might also read this piece in the New Statesman; or, if that's a bit left-wing for your taste, this one in the Economist.  You might also read FullFact's analysis of the figures, written back on 24 April.  But the circulation of the Express is nearly 600,000, and presumably those people read it because it confirms their prejudices, not for truth.
Related to all this is an interesting piece on the Left Foot Forward website, which graphs the number of times the word "scrounger" has been used in British newspapers since 1994.  It takes off steeply from 2010. Some of the comments under the article rubbish the accuracy of the exercise, but it remains fascinating.

PS:  I later discovered this, even worse, article in the Daily Mail.  They've added a bogus "workshy map of Britain" to fuel the lie of those "found fit to work".  It's breathtaking in its sheer dishonesty.  The writer is someone called Amanda Williams.  I wonder how much she was paid for this scurrilous trash.  These two papers between them continue to make Britain a nastier place than even the politicians know how to do.

Stats, the BBC - and reputations

The publication of the latest unemployment figures didn't get much coverage because the media were all too concerned with the Thatcher funeral.  However, for analysis have a look at the FullFact site here and here.  The first shows how the government is "managing" i.e. manipulating the figures for the media.  It is telling it's own story which is just not borne out by the true figures.  The second shows "what the politicians missed in the jobless figures".

Another story which might warm your heart (or not) was in the Daily Mail.  It's a very long piece about Iain Duncan Smith and his "days on the breadline".  The most important part of it is his criticism of the BBC:

"He clearly believes passionately in the work he is doing, although he despairs at how the Conservatives’ austerity programme is reported — above all, by the BBC. ‘The BBC is always negative, never explains, never talks about why we are reforming, or the fact that national debt is rising to terrifying levels,’ he complains. ‘All the BBC case studies are hard-luck stories like that of the £53-a-week market trader. They never focus on a family stuck on a housing waiting list or in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.’ He is clearly exasperated, too, at how removing the Spare Room Subsidy — which will see housing benefit-payment cuts to council house tenants with surplus spare rooms — has been labelled the ‘bedroom tax’ by Labour. When the BBC employed the same phrase, Duncan Smith complained. ‘Now they call it the “so-called bedroom tax”. It’s a disgrace.’"

As I've said before, this carping and intimidation is disgraceful - though we know it's official Tory policy.  What he says doesn't strike me as remotely accurate.  But IDS bombards the BBC with complaints, was disgustingly rude about Stephanie Flanders, and is really trying to ensure that the BBC presents only the spin that the government wants.  That's what is a disgrace.

And there's another worrying trend.  Anyone who goes public with their opposition to the government is likely to have their backgrounds trawled over and their reputations trashed by the right-wing press.  It happened with the chap who challenged IDS to live on £53 a week, and now it's happened to the woman who led a Facebook campaign to have people turn their backs on the Thatcher funeral procession.  Isn't a free press great!

Those employment figures

With no more responses from Jonty Olliff-Cooper, we can turn our attention to the latest employment figures, perhaps with a sense of deja vu.  The number of people unemployed fell a bit again.  This time there's been no careful analysis on Newsnight or the news; no critical report by Stephanie Flanders.  Presumably they didn't want another hysterical rant from Iain Duncan Smith.  The item on the BBC news website does report the ONS's verdict that "it's all down to women".  The number of men out of work has actually gone up.  And it does show the wide variations in unemployment around the country, and that it's actually going up in many areas.  Significantly for the Work Programme, it also reports that a record 1.42 million people are working part-time because they can't get full-time jobs.

Channel 4's Factcheck blog takes apart David Cameron's claim that the number of women in employment is up.  And Fullfact demolishes his boast that half a million private sector jobs have been created since the election.  It's also been shown that a lot of the "jobs" are accounted for by people going self-employed, often unwillingly.  And, of course, we don't know who they are, these people who are getting work.  They are probably not the long-term unemployed who would provide bumper payments to the WP providers.  If they are taking part-time jobs, they won't provide any outcome payments to the providers.  And since in many parts of the country, unemployment continues to rise, the outlook for the providers there is even bleaker.

I wonder whether there are negotiations going on to change the contracts.  Will all that part-time, casual or zero hours working be redefined as success?  I wouldn't be at all surprised.

More figures - and disagreement

As Channel 4 publishes more of the figures from that leaked report, so there is dispute about how meaningful they are.
The channel's news website details the outcome rates in different regions.  They are miserably low in some areas where the unemployment rate is also low; and better in areas where A4e are sub-contractors, suggesting to the writer that it's A4e's model which is at fault.  The reporter Jackie Long, on her Channel 4 blog, summarises this, and quotes the DWP's response that the interpretation of the stats was "ludicrous".  Long asks if A4e's figures would be better after 12 months instead of 10, and clearly doesn't think so.  
The Telegraph has carried the story, and expands on the DWP's response.  The spokes-person is quoted as saying that is "virtually impossible for any provider to have built up a significant number of job outcome payments by the end of March as most outcomes are only payable after someone has found a job and stayed in it for six months".  Hold on.  The stats revealed by Channel 4 are not about outcome payments.  They show the numbers of starters getting work and then staying in work for 13 weeks or more.  If they haven't been in a job for 13 weeks then they're not going to make it to 6 months.
Even more puzzling is the reaction of the FullFact website, which is normally very rigorous about stats.  They point to the premature judgement made by the Tories when in opposition on Flexible New Deal.  Figures show, they say, that "a significantly higher proportion of participants were finding sustainable work after 14 months than were after 11 months".  Well, if they say so.  We are to understand, then, that A4e's figures could look dramatically better in a few months' time.  

Redefining failure

One of the great advantages to government of flogging off public services is that the politicians are then not accountable.  Information is refused because it is "commercially sensitive".  Even at local council level, the taxpayers and the service users (and even councillors) are told that the details of contracts are none of their business.  The debacle over A4e highlighted the problems with this situation.  But for this government the Work Programme leaves them nowhere to hide.


Iain Duncan Smith spent years in opposition developing his theories on welfare.  Being in government has brought him face to face with reality.  But he can't afford for his theories to be proved wrong.  So, along with the imperturbable Chris Grayling, he has to insist, against all the evidence, that the Work Programme is proving a rip-roaring success.  The government can't afford for it to fail; it is the model for all future privatisation.  And if that means redefining failure as success, they'll do it.  The contracts, we are told, are strictly "payment by results".  But that isn't true.  The companies insisted on "attachment fees", an upfront payment for each starter.  Someone on the MyLegal website has analysed the finances and shown that A4e must already have received £25.3 million in attachment fees alone.  And if they are achieving only 10% job outcomes they are likely to have been paid around £32.8 million for getting 6,300 people into work.  But the dead weight figure (those who would have got work without any intervention) is reckoned to be around 25%.  When the government is finally obliged to publish figures it will be interesting to see how they get round that.  Then there's the fact that the contracts were supposed to involve small, local and charity organisations; but 28 of these have already dropped out, unable to make it pay.


What does increased "Mandatory Work Activity" do to the availability of actual jobs?  Never mind, there are plenty of jobs out there.  IDS, Grayling and other ministers trot out figures for the number of vacancies which bear an increasingly tenuous relationship with reality.  On 14 June IDS claimed that 500,000 new jobs are being added to Jobcentres every week.  The FullFact website has shown that this is simply not true.  JCP reckons it's about 10,000 a day; but any jobseeker knows that this doesn't reflect genuine job vacancies.


So annoyed is Iain Duncan Smith by the refusal of the real world to conform to his theories that he is increasingly blaming the poor for their poverty.  There's nothing new in that for the right wing of politics.  

Andrew Dutton - and those "workshy" figures

Andrew Dutton, A4e's group CEO, has written a piece for Director magazine which deserves careful scrutiny.

He starts by saying that "Businesses have a moral obligation to get the long-term jobless back into work", and continues that it disappoints him "that there is a genuine view that the unemployed are workshy and feckless. They simply are not." Good. I couldn't agree more. How has that perception come about, I wonder. But, according to Dutton, firms which have an online application process automatically filter out unemployed people. That's chilling if you're desperately looking for work and being told that you have to make a minimum number of applications. "Directors tell me," says Dutton, "they have a bottom line to hit and because they need the best people, dipping into the unemployment pool isn't what they want to do." So far, we can applaud his honesty. He is exhorting companies to shed their prejudices and work with A4e to "cut their costs of acquiring new employees and be more certain about getting someone who is more culturally aligned to the business." (I'm not at all sure what that last phrase means.)

But there's a paragraph which is questionable. "While it is true often that the long-term unemployed have barriers that do need to be overcome – confidence, low self-esteem, mental health or childcare issues –companies like ours clear those obstacles long before candidates go in front of an employer." How often is often? It is true that a good advisor can motivate people who have lost confidence; but what can they do about mental health issues? As for childcare - well, Hayley Taylor, who learned her trade with A4e, recently advised someone who was worried about childcare that she should never mention this to an employer and worry about it only when she was offered a job, at which point relatives and friends would step in to help. Perhaps that's how you clear the obstacle.

Dutton is straightforward about the fact that A4e is a business, not a charity, and describes the payment model. He wants employers to demonstrate some corporate responsibility and start employing the unemployed. No one could quarrel with that. But at the coalface, as advisors try to get people into work (are they still on commission for job outcomes?) doesn't it reinforce the suspicion that providers have every reason to focus on those who have been unemployed for the shortest time? And what mention is there of "upskilling"? The longer someone is out of work, the more outdated their skills and experience become. Unless A4e and the others are prepared to fund relevant training Dutton'e exhortations will probably be ignored.

Back to that piece in the Daily Mail and the Express which stated that 50% of claimants had signed off or not turned up for MWA and justified the description of "workshy". The FullFact website has examined this claim. The DWP told them that it hasn't released any figures. The only attribution is the Mail's "a source close to the programme". So it's worthless and malicious propaganda. Surprise, surprise.