Unpleasant story

There's an interesting story in Hull's local paper here which involves A4e.  I stress that no blame attaches to A4e.
It goes back to New Deal days, before 2008, when A4e had the contract in the city.  They would send people on fork lift truck courses (in those days you could get actual skills training).  One man who was sent on this was appalled to find that the boss of the firm was a man, Nicholas Holbrook, who had sexually abused him as a child, something he had never reported.  The man said he would not go on this training with Holbrook.  Says the paper: 'He claims he told the company of Holbrook’s abuse.  Mr Wilson said: “I said I’m not going. He abused me as a young kid.  They told me you can’t make accusations like that against a pillar of the community. You’ll get your benefits stopped.  I had a wife and three kids [so had to go].”'
Wilson came forward when he learned in 2013 that Holbrook had been jailed for 7 years for raping and sexually assaulting two men who had also been referred to Holbrook for training.  The report doesn't say how those two came to be referred, or by whom.  Wilson's evidence at a new trial put Holbrook away for a further 6 years.
As I said, no blame attaches to A4e.  It just seems a somewhat extreme example of what can happen when people are compelled, under threat of destitution, to put themselves in impossible situations.

More hate-mongering

I don't know whether Iain Duncan Smith and Richard Desmond have ever met, but they certainly work to help each other.  Desmond is the owner of Channel 5 and the Daily Express, and he uses both to demonise the poor.  After Channel 4 had screened the infamous Benefits Street, it was Channel 5 which hosted the "debate" on the subject.  Now, Desmond's channel is making a series of its own.  No title has been decided, they say (but the makers of Benefits Street said the same, and they lied) but it's about the benefits "culture", and they are in the process of filming.
We can see how they go about it through the protests of one of the cities unwillingly involved.  Hull has a lot to be encouraged about at the moment, in the midst of one of the worst unemployment rates in the country.  But now the film-makers have been leafletting the poorer estates seeking gullible people to take part, and have already done some filming.  Local councillors are furious, but seem helpless to prevent it.
Of course people should have the freedom to take part, if they are given accurate information and understand what they're doing.  But what about the people who live in the area and have not consented to this?  Benefits Street led to children who live in James Turner St being bullied.  Other residents felt that they had been stigmatised simply for their address.  Many of those who did take part believed that they were misled by the film-makers.  If there's a redress in law, none of them can afford to sue.
I have a suggestion.  Send Katie Hopkins to live on one of these estates for a while.  I'd watch that.

... and the truth is buried

I pointed out the claim that there were 2,000 vacancies in Hull, an area of high unemployment.  Despite the exposure of this claim as at best highly misleading, it has taken wings.  Today the Express has turned it into "Unemployment 'blackspot' that has 7,000 jobs going begging".  Yes, you read that right, 7,000.  Because, as everyone knows, only about 30% of vacancies are advertised in the Jobcentres.  The story does point out what some of those vacancies actually are; highly specialised and requiring qualifications (and they include Army jobs!).  But that doesn't deter the DWP chap.  "Stuart Griffiths, Hull district manager for the Department for Work and Pensions, said unemployed people had a misconception that there were no jobs on offer.  He said: 'It is a myth that there are no jobs out there.  People sometimes come into our offices and say there are no jobs out there but it is simply not true.  These might not be the jobs of people’s dreams – we accept not everyone wants to be a carer or a butcher, for example. We all want to create and attract new jobs into the city, and we all want the jobs from large companies.  But what we are saying is, if people want to train to work in renewables, for example, why not take a job now and earn money so you can train towards the career you want?'"
Hang on, how many of these jobs are open to trainees with no experience?  And it doesn't deter the odious Taxpayers' Alliance.  "Last night Robert Oxley, campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: 'It is ludicrous that we are paying out so much in jobseekers’ allowance when there are jobs out there waiting to be filled.  The welfare system has long needed reform so that it both equips people for work and ensures they take the jobs on offer.  With money tight we can’t afford for people to remain out of employment. It is vital that the welfare system ensures that work pays and that dodging it does not.'"
That's the agenda, of course.  All those people in Hull, and elsewhere, who are desperate for work have now been branded as workshy, and it feeds the far right's determination to destroy the welfare system.
Strange, but no one has mentioned the Work Programme.  You would think the providers in the area (they don't include A4e) would have a comment to make.

How the untruths spread

There's a Jobcentre manager in Hull who might be regretting the "facts" he gave to the local paper.  He certainly should be.  The Hull Daily Mail reported today "2,000 jobs on offer in Hull, but no takers, Jobcentre says".  Hull has double the national average of people on JSA, so this would be a big story if true. But the comments in reaction show that it isn't.  Somebody went on the direct.gov website and found only 250 vacancies within 15 miles of Hull, and most of those were for people with specific qualifications like an HGV licence.  Other people pointed out that many listed vacancies are not jobs at all.  And so on; I don't need to labour the point for many of my readers.  But it's been repeated on the BBC's website as "Concern over Hull's 2,000 unfilled job vacancies", and again on the local news.  I can't imagine that unemployed people in Hull are too thrilled about this.  Is it happening where you are?
This sort of very damaging myth helps the government.  The Guardian reports that Iain Duncan Smith is about to put his proposals for welfare cuts before the government.  They will include "freezing the up-rating of benefits for two years and then linking it to pay as opposed to inflation".  Because, of course, if there are all those workshy people out there they don't deserve any more.

Telling it like it is

An excellent article was published in the Guardian yesterday.  They went to Hull, where the unemployment rate is among the worst in the country, and looked at how the Work Programme is actually operating.  This is not propaganda, but reality.  The contract is held by G4S, but is sub-contracted here to Pertemps.  "Officially," says the article, "the barrier is never simply that there are 58 jobseekers for every job available in the city (and in any case, staff point out cheerfully that the latest figure for Hull has dropped to just 22.6). The barriers they diagnose could be difficulties with basic literacy and numeracy, it could be drug or alcohol problems, it may be lack of transport, self-esteem, experience, skills or training. All of these things are problems to which Pertemps has solutions. The subtext is that external economic factors can never be the cause of someone's unemployment: the problem must somehow lie with the individual."  We know that that's a major complaint of people on the WP - that their unemployment must be their fault - and it's feeding the perceptions of government and the wider public.  Pertemps is apparently not meeting its target in Hull but the Guardian is not allowed by the DWP to publish the figures.


It would do ministers good to read about the people described here.  


Meanwhile, the voluntary sector is still complaining.  They are finding that their volunteers are being taken away to go on the WP.  

Jumping the Gun?

Anyone watching the BBC's Politics Show in the North today would have to assume that the Work Programme contracts are already done and dusted.

The introduction to the item talked about a "Sheffield company" which was going to do what is already done in Germany, work with whole families. They then looked at Orchard Park Estate in Hull, where unemployment is very high and women say there are no jobs for the majority who want to work.

Cut to Emma Harrison of A4e, even more ebullient than usual. Cities like Hull, she said, need more support. A4e are going to be allowed to work with whole families, isn't that wonderful? The new Work Programme will mean "a massive breakthrough" because of this working with entire families. Cut back to a Hull councillor. who said that the programme was about cutting benefits rather than creating jobs. Back to Emma, who talks about the trap of Incapacity Benefit, and how the "radical reforms" will stop this.

A brief studio discussion followed, in which a Labour MP said that the last government did focus on whole families, and this was just re-badging. A woman from the Taxpayers' Alliance talked about making work pay and the need to create jobs.

So what are we to make of this? The company have been pushing for this "whole families" concept for a long time, and it looks like all that lobbying of ministers which Harrison brags about has paid off. The new government's advisers are oblivious to the dangers of giving the employees of a private company the right to interfere in the lives of families. Presumably where A4e has the current FND contracts they will accept the new, "re-negotiated" WP contracts, and that's why Harrison appears to be jumping the gun. If their clients in Hull want to question the new approach they can always seek legal advise - from the CLAC run by A4e.

The Know Hope Roadshow

A tweet from A4e says: *In Scarbro' yesterday, one man told us how A4e had changed his life and one woman who had been in f/t work 12 months had bought 1st house."

I asked a contact in Hull to look in on the roadshow there today, and he has sent me the following email:

"They had a van in Victoria Square, an old Volkswagen camper van painted in the Know Hope branding. They weren't giving out leaflets, as far as I could see, they just wanted to engage people in conversation. They had two cameras set up on tripods - not sure why, but they seemed to be getting people to wear a Know Hope t-shirt and be photographed in it. The A4e logo was around, on the back of the van and on the team's jumpers, but it wasn't prominent. I would say that they are pushing the Know Hope branding, with A4e very much secondary. I didn't go up and talk to them, sorry. I don't look like a potential client so I didn't know what to say."

It certainly looks like they are trying to start FND as a new brand. Will it work?

Twittering A4e - and No (sorry, Know) Hope

If you look for Twitter feeds on A4e you'll get two kinds (see below) - tweets from disgruntled clients, and PR tweets from A4e itself. They've got a new one called A4eworks, where you can learn about the roadshow they're running to promote FND under the banner of Know Hope. They've gone from Rotherham (see the video here) to Middlesborough yesterday, Scarborough today, Hull tomorrow and Barnsley and Doncaster on Friday. You have to admire their courage (sort of). Of course, FND is going to be nothing like New Deal. "Flexible New Deal is a completely new approach, and it's just that - 'Flexible'. We know everyone is different and so the 'Flexible' part means that organisations like A4e are free to help you and your specific needs. Getting back into work through Flexible New Deal means the help you get is completely tailored to you and your individual circumstances. It's your own personal journey back to work." Etc. Read it all here and remember it.

I can't help thinking that the slogan Know Hope is a mistake!

PS. I apologise if I gave him the idea, but someone who calls himself highpark1 has just added his Hub pages as Twitter items. These are anti-A4e stories, all of them taken directly from other people's sites, without acknowledgement, let alone permission.

Don't mention New Deal

I caught a fascinating Radio 4 programme on Saturday morning. Called "Give us a Job", it was marking the centenary of the institution of Job Centres. They were called Labour Exchanges then, of course. You can hear it on iplayer. After looking at the history, Michael Portillo (yes, I know, but he's out of politics now) spoke to Mark Serwotka and then asked Yvette Cooper about the new Welfare Reform Bill. I waited, naturally, for any mention of the New Deal or Jobcentre Support contracts, but all we got were a couple of cliches about how the Bill was "to take forward more support" for people looking for work and, "We're a society that cares for people." Either the omission was deliberate, or it reflected the irrelevance of these hugely expensive contracts.

This morning the Guardian reports the results of a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses, called "The Jobcentre is not working". Again, there is absolutely nothing about New Deal and the private companies. All the burden of expectation is on Jobcentre Plus, despite the fact that the government is spending vast amounts of money on private companies like A4e to take on much of JCP's role. This is a curious situation, to say the least.

PS. The One Show tonight had a piece about youth unemployment, from Hull which has the highest incidence, and has for years had this dubious honour. The focus was the Young Person's Guarantee. Yvette Cooper was given a few brief lines to say; notably that any young person signing on today is guaranteed not to be signing on a year from now. What they're carefully not saying is that the jobs will be only temporary, and that many youngsters will get only "training". Again, the privatised New Deal situation is unmentioned. The real point of the piece, I felt, was that the only body actually doing something about youth unemployment is the local Council, which funds apprenticeships.

PPS. With all the current talk of cutting non-essential programmes, can we dare to hope that the decidedly non-essential FND contracts will be cut?

The legacy of Benefit Busters

Inevitably there was a great deal missing from last night's Benefit Busters programme.

We were told that A4e was contracted to occupy the clients for 30 hours per week. We were not told that this is meant to include a work placement. The original idea behind the contracts was that claimants would get experience of working and, possibly, be taken on by the employer permanently. Lots of A4e's clients are indeed out on placements, but few with private sector employers, who don't want the hassle. Most are hived off to the voluntary sector, and A4e pays the organisations small amounts to take them.

The pressures on space and the difficulty in usefully occupying clients results in people being sent out to roam the streets. Two former A4e clients in Hull complained to the local BBC office that they had been sent out to do quizzes, and that the whole "course" had been a waste of time.

Mark's job was intended to be permanent and so would have resulted in a job outcome payment for A4e. However, since he didn't stay in the job for 13 weeks, they would not have received the "rolled up weeks", the payments for the remaining weeks of the programme.

A4e were caught claiming agency jobs as permanent in Hull. We saw how these jobs are casual and so very unpopular with claimants; they also don't qualify as real jobs with the DWP, so the temptation to get the agency to tick the "permanent" box is very real.

A few months after this programme was filmed, an Ofsted inspection rated A4e's offices in the area only "satisfactory" and gave the figure for job outcomes as 18%.

A4e's PR people will know that this programme, together with last week's episode, are a disaster for the image of the company and its boss. But does it matter in the long run? The Conservatives are still reluctant to say that they would ditch FND, because it depends on the state of the contracts when they get into government. And for A4e the future lies abroad more than in Britain.

Benefit Busters, episode 2

Before the A4e-bashing starts, let's get something clear. What we saw tonight was the creation of the government. Gordon Brown's New Deal was transformed into this ridiculous 13-week "course" with the aim, supposedly, of encouraging the private sector to get the results they were being paid for. So blame, first of all, the government.

And something else needs to be said. The programme gave the impression that poor benighted Hull was dependent on A4e for getting its high unemployment rate down. It isn't. A4e has a subcontractor in the city, the local FE college, which has as many clients as A4e. (The figure of 700 clients was quoted - I think that means the total for A4e itself and the college.) And there are a number of local initiatives, not least by the local council.

Having said that, I'm amazed that A4e agreed to this. The clients shown were not representative. Where were the men and women with a good work record and qualifications? But those who were picked out did enable the point to be made. These contracts are a waste of time and money. People sat around doing nothing; as Mark said, "The idea is to bore you into getting work." Mark got a job and was thrilled - but a few weeks later he was made redundant. That meant he was angrier than ever. Sherrelle, a brave young woman, got a job which lasted 4 weeks. Natalie, a recruiter from the (Primetime?) agency tried, largely without success, to get people to go for agency work at Greencore, a large local cake factory. But the clients knew that this was casual work and avoided it. Dane, a young man who could be seen as a stereotypical layabout, went for the induction, having been assured that the work was full time, but turned it down when he realised it was temporary with no guaranteed hours. Not enough explanation was given for this problem; but we learned that when Mark lost his job it took 3 weeks to get his benefits reinstated.

And all this was put to Emma Harrison. Did she cringe when she saw it? The narrator put it to her that, with the signing of the lucrative new contracts (FND), is recession good for business? She conceded that because there were more people they were more difficult to help. Then we got the PR phrases. The ultimate aim is to transform people's lives. A4e is different because they come at it from a different angle. It's "gutting" to let an individual down. After we saw Mark having to sign on again and Dane refusing casual work, Emma is asked about A4e's pushing people towards temporary jobs or zero-hour contracts. She says that it undermines people's confidence, and will talk about it more at government level (!) There is an uncomfortable silence. When the narrator asks again, she laughs and says she isn't a genius and has no answer, but will think about it.

I don't think this was the programme A4e had in mind.

Ofsted report for A4e North East, East Yorkshire and Humber, Programme Centres

On 26 June 2009 there was an Ofsted inspection of A4e's premises in Hull, York, Bridlington, Goole, Grimsby and Scunthorpe (it was during A4e Hull's nightmare week). The full report can be found here. As with all of A4e's inspections under the current contracts the overall grade is 3 - satisfactory. (There are 4 grades; 1, outstanding, 2, good, 3, satisfactory and 4, inadequate.) The summary says:

Key strengths

 Good development of confidence and motivation

 Good links to external organisations to provide specialist support

 Particularly effective management information system to monitor performance

 Good management of subcontractor

Key areas for improvement

 Very low progression rates into jobs

 Insufficiently individualised target-setting and action planning

 Insufficiently thorough quality arrangements

They point out the very low progression rate into jobs of 18% in 2008 / 09, while recognising that "the number of participants joining the programme has increased significantly from 203 participants in the first three months of 2008/09 to 585 in the last three months of 2008/09".

One paragraph which surprised me stated that "Procedures for safeguarding participants do not meet current government requirements. A4e currently does not have a suitable safeguarding policy and procedure. Staff have not had appropriate background checks and have not received training covering safeguarding vulnerable adults."

The report makes interesting reading for anyone who has been on an A4e programme or has worked in the sector.

Some recent blog posts

Here is a selection of the most recent News & Comment posts from the old website:

On 30 June the first lot of bids for allocations from the Future Jobs Fund will be considered. This is a £1 bn fund aimed at creating real jobs, mainly for young people, and the government is stating that it wants local authorities, regional bodies and the like to lead, in partnership with public sector and "third sector" bodies. No mention, you notice, of private sector companies, so A4e can sit this one out. But no. A4e is attending the Local Government Conference in Harrogate next week and "we'd like to hear from anyone who would like to partner with A4e to maximise the impact of the Future Jobs Fund to benefit your local community." (A4e's website) After describing what the Future Jobs Fund is, they say, "As a market leader of Welfare to Work services, A4e has capacity and capability to design, develop and deliver front line public services that benefit individuals, organisations and communities. This includes partnership working with the private, public and third sector organisations." We shouldn't be surprised, of course. Just by chance I came across a quote from Emma today: "There are three things that you should spend you time doing: Marketing, marketing, marketing. It is the most important thing that someone growing a business should be doing. If you are not prepared to do that, then everything else is irrelevant." Yes, if there's public money on offer, A4e will be there.

A4e is at the centre of a fraud enquiry, the Observer reports today. "The DWP started its investigation into A4e's Hull office in May 2008, after discrepancies emerged in "confirmation of employment" forms submitted by the company. Two recruiters filled in forms meant for employers who agreed to take on workers. In some cases, employers' signatures were falsified. One of the recruiters had also entered into a fraudulent deal with a local temp agency. In January, the recruiter was sacked, while the other resigned. "It had the smell of a conspiracy," a source close to the company said. An A4e spokesman said it had found only 20 fraudulent claims. It remained unclear last night why the DWP investigation has been going for 13 months, when A4e was a bidding for major government contracts. A4e is expected to repay £15,000. Another recruitment company has been asked to repay £48,000 following a DWP inquiry." Wow! It's small-scale stuff, but the Observer points out the government's "individual learning accounts" fell victim to the same sort of fraud and had to be scrapped. The article says that Yvette Cooper, the new DWP secretary, has said that the multi-million pound contracts could be cancelled if widespread fraud is discovered. Don't hold your breath.

Tonight Channel 4 News carried a report which will dent A4e's image even further: The piece sets out to show that fraud is common in the New Deal programmes, but that the DWP doesn't publish the results of its investigations so it's hidden. The first part of the piece concentrates on Working Links, who forged clients' signatures and paperwork in Glasgow in 2007. Since that investigation, more fraud has been uncovered in Brighton, North Wales and Hackney. Then they turn to A4e, which is decribed as one of the biggest names in the industry. The fraud that the Observer reported on yesterday is mentioned, malpractice which took place over a 4 month period in 2007. But, says Channel 4, there was another case towards the end of 2008, also in Hull. An A4e employee was found to be colluding with an employment agency to state that factory jobs were intended to last for 13 weeks, and therefore attract a payment, when they were only ever meant to be temporary. A4e says that this was a "rogue operator" and two members of staff have been sacked. (In fact, it's common practice.) Terry Rooney MP, who is the Chair of the Work & Pensions Select Committee, said he had no idea that investigations had taken place, and wants the National Audit Office involved. Jim Knight MP, employment minister, says there's no evidence of systematic fraud. But the piece has shown that significant amounts of public money are being wasted on fraud which is being covered up. Not a good few days for A4e!

The local BBC TV news in Hull has carried a piece which will cause A4e more grief. Vicky Johnson talked to two clients, Simon and Steve who said they spent more time doing quizzes than developing their skills. They retraced one of the quizzes, out on the streets in the city - one way of getting rid of the clients for a while. The two said that the programme was a waste of money and they were very disappointed. The only useful element had been the updating of their CVs and being able to give A4e as a reference. Jonathan Davies, the local A4e manager, said that they had just had an Ofsted inspection and had some "very positive feedback". We'll await this report with interest.

But no doubt A4e are regretting the proximity of their Hull office to the BBC Centre.

It hasn't taken long for A4e's dealings in Australia to be called into question:

Basically, it alleges that A4e had contacts with the most influential politicians before the bidding process started for the welfare-to-work contracts there. The implication, of course, is that the private meetings influenced the destination of the contracts. Perish the thought! A4e wouldn't do anything like that, would they? Despite all the meetings that went on, the government department denies that there was anything wrong. But the article, which points out that "A4e has strong links to the British Labour Party and is being investigated by the UK Government for alleged fraud involving work placement contracts" also draws attention to an intriguing fact. "A4e executives met Ms Gillard's [the Employment Minister's] deputy chief of staff, Tom Bentley, in February last year to discuss the Government's plans to reform employment services for Australia's unemployed. A4e had no contracts in Australia at this time." Now, this same Tom Bentley "worked in Mr Blunkett's ministerial office as a special adviser on school reform and social inclusion" in 1998/99. It's worth reading the whole article. A4e's reputation has travelled, and the Australian press is saying things that the British press daren't.